Crime Writers of Canada National Crime Writing Blog

Dave Hugelschaffer on Fire

2012-01-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

Knocking ‘em Dead:
Killing your Victim

In the murder mystery business, a lot of bodies are bound to pile up. How the victims are killed is usually an integral part of the plot as the modus operandi will leave behind clues that move forward the investigation. When killing someone it is therefore important to consider how this pivotal event will guide your plotting. I would go so far as to advise one plot the investigation, then choose the cause of death that best fits the plot.

As the author of the Porter Cassel Mystery Series I have an unusual perspective on murder. The series revolves around the investigation of forest fires involving fatalities. What is particularly interesting with a forest fire is that a fatality does not have to be intentional for the determination of murder. If a fire is set intentionally, with no homicidal motivation, and someone is killed as a result of the fire, the arsonist is criminally responsible for the fatality. If the arsonist intended to kill using the fire, he is charged with first degree murder. If he didn’t intend to kill, he is charged with a lower count of murder, or manslaughter. Either way, the arsonist is on the hook, and this has allowed me considerable scope in the development of murder mystery series based on fire investigation.

Another interesting facet of fire investigation is the relationship between arson and other related crimes. Arson is often used as a secondary crime to obliterate evidence of a primary crime, with the obvious motivation to avoid detection and prosecution. For example, a murder may be covered up by setting the crime scene—either a building or a forest—on fire. This is an efficient way to sanitize a crime scene as fire will destroy virtually all fingerprints and most biological evidence. It also complicates a crime scene as the fire will wreak havoc with the surrounding environment, increasing the difficulty of locating the crime scene. Add to this frequent unintentional contamination of the scene by firefighters unaware of the sinister existence of another, more serious crime, and you have a highly complex murder to solve—therefore a complex investigation. Even without murder, wildfire arson is statistically the most difficult crime in the world to solve.

If arson is used as a secondary crime, the author has almost unlimited options in how to bump off the victim. Hang them, shoot them, stab them, poison them. Read them bad poetry until they do themselves in. Once they’re dead, burn the body and surrounding area. In fact, the victim doesn’t need to be killed where the fire is set—they can be killed elsewhere and the body moved. Now you’ve got two geographically separate crime scenes. Writing an effective and satisfying mystery is about making the murder as complicated as possible. Keep in mind, as you’re complicating the killing, that you’ll need to solve the crime, or crimes, in a logical and believable manner. Don’t paint yourself into a corner. Do the research. I love research—in fact, I find it more interesting than writing. Learning new things. Gaining access to places and people you would never have if you weren’t an author. But that’s a subject for another time. For now, rub your hands together with sinister glee, and plan to kill someone.

On paper, of course. Authors are nice people.

Dave Hugelschaffer is the author of the Porter Cassel mystery series, based on forest fire investigation. As a former forest ranger and wild land firefighter, he writes from a position of experience that provides the series with authenticity, and the reader insight into a world rarely explored in mystery fiction.

www.davehugelschaffer.com

Melodie Campbell Takes Aim

2012-01-09T08:11:00.000-08:00

I Could Just Shoot Them!

Murder and mystery – as crime writers, we relish these words. And for many of us, firearms are the weapons of choice for finishing off fictional victims. However, I have a beef about how writers sometimes deal with firearms in their novels, to which I say:
I could just shoot them for not doing their homework!

My own research came early. I grew up on the furthest street up the side of a mountain in West Vancouver. We regularly had bears clawing the wooden front door and cougars roaming through our yard. With the forest mere feet away, we did not venture out into the woods without a rifle.

So – from an early age, I was handling firearms, specifically a 22 with sniper sights, a 30-0-6, and a shotgun. Later, I acquired a Marlin takedown carbine, which fit me perfectly. (Carbines are shorter than rifles; takedown carbines can be disassembled to about half their length.) In my thirties, I became proficient and competitive with a competition 22 handgun.

Which brings me to Things that drive me nuts in novels:

1. Magazines do not fall out of revolvers. Revolvers are called that for a reason: they have a rotating cylinder into which you load rounds of ammunition.

2. Revolvers are very nice for accuracy and reliability. “Six sure shots” are what we used to say. However, they need to be cocked. If you don’t cock a 38 or 45 caliber revolver, then your pull action has to be very, very strong – probably stronger than most women are comfortable doing. And that throws off your aim.

Which brings me to:
3. Don’t just have your character pull a gun and shoot. It drives me crazy when people just spray bullets all over the place. The character should aim. He or she should look down the sights of the firearm to line up with a target.

Example from School for Burglars (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, July/August 2007) “She lifted the gun, lined up the sights and fired.”

4. Two-shot Derringers – the kind you can stick in a silk stocking if you are not worried about shooting your toes off – aren’t accurate worth a damn.

5. Your petite protagonist will not pick up a 12 gauge shotgun, put it to her shoulder, and calmly fire. A shotgun will put not-so-petite me on my butt, if I try to shoot it like a rifle. I shoot from the hip. Even then, one might get bruised and knocked back. Better to give her a rifle, or takedown carbine.

6. About hair triggers: I nearly shot off my foot while holding a heavy crossbow with a hair trigger. Those things are dangerous! You don’t have to pull at all - a mere touch will fire them. You can use this to your advantage when writing, but be aware what it means.

Final words: If you are not completely familiar with firearms, why not stick to the tried and true methods of murder: the rope, the candlestick and the lead pipe.

Don't look for bullets in Rowena Through the Wall (No. 2 on Amazon.ca top 100 fantasy-futuristic bestseller list, Aug 2011!). Swords, sorcery and the ballistic stew are the weapons of the day. Rowena Through the Wall is available at Indigo.ca, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.it, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble.

Melodie Campbell has a Commerce degree from Queen's University, but it didn't take well. She has been a bank manager, marketing director, comedy writer, college instructor and possibly the worst runway model ever. Melodie has over 200 publications including over 30 short stories and 100 humour credits. She has won five awards for fiction.

Gayleen Froese - Hands On

2011-12-18T08:48:00.000-08:00

A Feel for the Real Deal

"The first place we're going," Jeff told me, "is the shooting gallery. You will come with me and we will have fun."

My friend Jeff is a man of unshakable beliefs. One of these is that anything he considers fun is fun, for everyone. I was about to argue the point when I remembered two things: 1) Jeff was my guest in Edmonton, which meant going where he wanted to go, and
2) I was writing a novel in which a character had to load and fire a handgun, and I've never done either. An air pistol, sure, but not the real thing. I figured I should give it a go.

I told Jeff I'd be happy to accompany him.

"Excellent," he declared. "I hear they have a great many guns there."

That was a selling point for Jeff, who wanted to shoot something interesting. I merely wanted to shoot something educational.

The gallery did have a great many guns, as it turned out. You could shoot nearly any of them, for a price. You paid for brief access to a gun, ammunition, ear protection, and a gallery where you'd be taken through the basics by a trainer who doubled as a security guard.

"Oh, no," I said, spotting a blindingly shiny gun with an awkward, oversized barrel. "Is that a Desert Eagle?"

"Oh, yes," Jeff said. "Yes it is."

"One of my characters used to carry one," I said. "He thought it was cool. It looks ridiculous."

"It is ridiculous."

"Evidently." I said. "I feel as if I know my character better now. He just, deep down, felt he needed the biggest gun. That's what was wrong with him in a lot of ways."

Jeff wasn't willing to pursue that conversation, so we concentrated on choosing our guns.

I was having a good time, actually, even in the gallery. My gun was easy to hold and shoot, if a pain to load. I enjoyed finding, after a quick lesson from the trainer, that my aim was pretty good.

I'd reloaded once and was about to start shooting again when I realized that I was standing in a room full of strangers, with the exception of Jeff, and that all of them were holding guns.

I'd thought I was used to guns, since they're on TV all the time. I'd played paintball and laser tag. I even knew a few people who carried real guns. Some of my friends did target shooting, and my dad had a rifle. I knew a guy who'd driven for several hours with two bags of loose guns in his trunk, but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, the last thing I'd expected was to feel uncomfortable around guns. It was strange, though. I didn't know these people, for one thing. And they weren't just carrying guns. They were shooting. They weren't shooting each other, of course, but they could have if they'd felt like it. In such a small room, I was pretty sure the trainer/guard wouldn't have been able to pull his own gun until at least one person had been shot. It would have been terrifyingly simple, and quick, and final.

And what about that guard, who carried a gun in case he needed to shoot someone who'd decided to shoot other people? That was a possibility he accepted when he started work each day.

That was when I realized I hadn't come there to learn how to load or fire a gun. I'd thought I had, but those things hadn't been important. I'd come there to learn that a real gun could be scary, no matter how inured to guns a person might believe herself to be. I'd gotten a sense of how my detectives might feel about carrying a gun, and how they might react when a gun was pointed at them. I'd learned there was a surprising weight to even the little one I'd picked up.

I stayed and finished my ammunition, though I didn't really want to. I didn't say anything about what I was thinking to my friend, who'd had a whale of a time and was already planning his next visit.

"We'll come back next time I'm in town," he said. "We can try different guns. You want to shoot the Desert Eagle?"

I said no, thanks.

"You can come back if you want, but I got what I needed in there."

Gayleen Froese is a novelist and musician from western Canada who currently lives in Edmonton’s historic Alberta Avenue district. The 39-year old has worked as a radio writer and talk show host, an advertising creative director, and a communications officer. She was the winner of the second series of BookTelevision’s 3 Day Novel Contest, which aired in late 2009. Her non-fiction and humour writing has appeared in publications including See Magazine, Avenue Magazine, The Rat Creek Press, and The Session. Touch, Gayleen’s first novel, was published by NeWest Press in Edmonton. The sequel, Grayling Cross, was released in Spring 2011.

www.gayleenfroese.com

Juanita Rose Violini Plays Fair

2011-12-04T07:44:00.001-08:00

Getting Away with Murder... Or not

Let me get something off my chest right now. It's all about the puzzle for me. I love being tricked and tricking others. If I reach the end of a murder mystery, whether I'm reading it or writing it, and the killer is someone other than the obvious suspect, I'm happy - so long as all the clues are there to follow in the first place.

Fair play mysteries, where the writer gives the reader all the information necessary to solve the crime are fun. And they can partner up with other types of mysteries. Personally, I am not a fan of slasher mysteries, but they can still have a clue-trail. It doesn't matter if the crime takes place leaving body parts graphically strewn across the pages or in a drawing room with a single broken teacup; does the scene contain enough hints for the detective to make his way along an invisible path? Does it end with an AH HA? Is the solution obvious once you know whodunit?

Coming from a background of writing live mystery entertainment for corporate events, I decided early on that the mysteries I write will be both entertaining and solvable. One of my most murderous feelings came when I attended a mystery party produced by a competitor. Diligently I listened to every word the actors spoke and examined every piece of evidence. Confident that I could finger the culprit I turned in my solution sheet. When the MC blithely announced who the killer was, and that there were no real clues, it had to be a lucky guess, I was ready to grab my butter knife and stab it through his oh wait almost forgot that I don't go for the graphically strewn body parts.

Writing customized scripts for each client was a very labourious task. I scoured libraries and second hand stores looking for a book that would tell me a quick and easy way to plant clues in a mystery. Eventually I came to the conclusion that such a clever document does not exist and I must write it. It's still just a draft but it helps me enormously. Here's the outline turned table of contents that I use.

How to Create a Mystery Plot or Party

THE DIRT
You need dirt to dig up a plot.

THE BONES
Motive: Why did it happen?
Method: How did it happen?
Opportunity: When did it happen?

THE MUSCLES
Characters/Suspects: Who did it?
Setting: Where did it happen?

THE HEART
What Actually Happened

THE MIND
What Appeared to Happen

THE SOUL
Twisting & Untwisting
The AH-HA! Clue

The mastermind behind the Masterpiece Mysterys, Juanita has written, produced and directed over 50 corporate Murder Mystery scenarios, performed for groups ranging from 20 to 200 people of all ages and walks of life.
Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible and the Ignored, Juanita's first book, was published by Red Wheel Weiser in October 2009 and includes 365 illustrations by the author. A real-life mystery for each day of the year, on the day it occurred makes this a great compendium of the unsolved and the unexplained.

mysteryfactory.com
www.incrediblealmanac.com
twitter.com/JuanitaViolini
www.facebook.com/pages/Almanac-Of-The-Infamous-The-Incredible-And-The-Ignored/113239236442

Gloria Ferris - Deadly Blooms

2011-11-20T08:05:00.001-08:00

Murder by Moonflower

See the Moonflower? Isn't it pretty? Its botanical name is Datura Stramonium. You may have one in your own garden or see one growing against an old fence or tree. The plant likes to open its blossoms at night, hence its lovely name.

But the Moonflower has a dark side, and is also known as Thorn Apple, Devil's Trumpet, Mad Apple, Stink Weed and a host of other names. You may have heard it referred to as Jimsonweed.

A Jimsonweed trip isn't pleasant. Burning skin, extreme thirst, fluid retention – and then there's the hallucinations. They can last for days and you're stuck with them until the substance works it's way out of your system via the catheter the hospital staff will be forced to insert along with the IV line. Fluid in, fluid out. And all while you watch three-headed snakes crawl into your bed, or hear giant moths hiss at you out of mouths lined with jagged teeth. Bet you won't try that again.

And that is the best scenario. If, like Valerie Quantz, in Murder by Moonflower, you have a bad head cold and don't notice that your cleansing, bitter-tasting pau d'arco tea has been rendered even more bitter by the inclusion of a hefty dose of Jimsonweed, you might not make it to the hospital.

Valerie, an Episcopalian priest, forces her aching body up the winding staircase to the church loft to conduct the regular Wednesday evening choir practice. She very quickly drinks three bottles of water to quench her thirst and is forced to tear off her clothes to cool her skin. Not that these tactics ease her discomfort for long. And she soon notices that her choir members have turned into segmented, red-eyed insects – demons, she believes, sent by Satan to drag her to Hell for her old sins. Sins for which she had long ago sought atonement and received forgiveness.

Fortunately, an angel speaks to her and tells Valerie she can fly away to Heaven and escape the demons crunching their forelegs together and reaching out for her with their hooked antennae. Valerie whirls around and jumps onto the railing of the loft. Her bare feet grip the polished wood like suction cups. She feels lighter than air and barely needs to touch the pillar for support.

At last she can see the angels. They are so beautiful, their lovely faces pulsing in and out of view, wings like spun sunlight. But how can she fly away with the angels, she has no wings of her own?

Ah, but she does. Valerie can feel them on her bare shoulders, soft, feathery, gossamer wings. The wings stir, then open. They beat in time with her heart, faster, faster, surely fast enough to fly her away from this place of retribution. She can almost touch the vaulted ceiling of the church.

The sound of her wings beating, beating, overpowers the rustling of the demons behind her. Spreading her arms wide, Valerie Quantz summons all her courage and faith. One foot lifts from the railing, then the other.
She senses the angels around her as her wings carry her out of reach of the devils crowding against the railing. One angel holds out a hand to her and she grasps it tightly as she soars towards Heaven...

Needless to say, the angels may have carried Valerie off to Heaven that evening, but not until her mortal body smashed into the pews beneath the choir loft. Not a botanist, Valerie didn't know that the plants growing under her kitchen window, the plants that bore such beautiful white flowers, would cause her demise at the age of thirty-four. But then, she probably shouldn't have married a penniless artist and taken out a million dollar life insurance policy, all in the same month.

Gloria has been a member of Crime Writers of Canada since 2008. Cheat the Hangman was a finalist in the 2009 Unhanged Arthur contest and has since been published by Imajin Books. She won the 2010 Unhanged Arthur contest with Corpse Flower which is presently awaiting publication and she is working on the sequel, Murder by Moonflower. She lives in Guelph, Ontario and wishes she was thirty years younger so she could dress like a Goth all the time, not just at book signings.

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey-Truth is Stranger

2011-11-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

Committing A Believable Murder

I believe in that old adage “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction.”

In 1976, a partially decomposed body was found in a septic tank near Edmonton, Alberta. The person has never been identified nor has the murderer ever been found. For my first book, Illegally Dead, I decided to write a conclusion to that mystery. However, I never looked up any information about it, just made up my story. When my manuscript was finished, I then checked the Internet and discovered that one of my characters had the same name as one of the detectives who investigated the crime. I immediately changed my character’s name. Then I searched some more on the Internet and found many real life episodes where killers have used, or tried to use, septic tanks as hiding places for their victims
.
For my second novel, The Only Shadow In The House, I made up the stories about the lives of the characters, as well as the murder. Of course, ‘made up’ really means taking some of the little tidbits that we writers have learned during our lifetime and fashioning them into fiction. When a friend finished reading the book she phoned me and said that she had read it in a day not being able to put it down until the last page. Then she asked me where I got the idea for story. I told her that I had made it up and asked her why. She said because it was the story of her older sister’s life, except for the murder, of course.

In my third novel, Whistler’s Murder, I used another news item. This one was about an old rumour of a body being hidden in a house in a resort town in the Alberta Rockies. The house was torn down and no body found. I took it step further and had a body being found in my story.
These novels are the first three of my Travelling Detective Series.

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey began her writing career by having seven travel books published but has now turned her talents to mystery writing with her Travelling Detective Series. Joan loves change and has worked as a bartender, hotel maid, cashier, bank teller, bookkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, warehouse shipper, house renovator and nursing attendant. She has moved over thirty times in her life settling on an acreage on Vancouver Island for now.

thetravellingdetectiveseries.blogspot.com

Kay Stewart - Suspicious Circumstances

2011-10-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

Keeping the Mystery in Murder

The “what if?” moment that gave rise to A Deadly Little List came when my husband (and sometimes co-author) Chris Bullock and I were watching a touring light opera company perform The Mikado.

As the small cast stood in a line singing “Behold the Lord High Executioner,” that noble personage strode to and fro, swinging a no doubt fake sword over their heads.

What if? I thought. What if he swung and killed someone?

Now, there are two obvious problems with using that scenario for a murder mystery.

First, there’s no mystery. Readers would know who did it. Second, there’s no murder, just an accidental death. Or maybe it wasn’t accidental…. Natural death or homicide? Accidental death or homicide? Suicide or homicide?

Even the most seasoned investigators are sometimes baffled by a crime scene, as Saanich Police sergeants Nancy Melville and Richard Gosling brilliantly demonstrated in the highly ambiguous case they presented at Bloody Words 2011 in June. At the request of the family, workshop participants agreed not to publicize details of the case. Without breaking confidentiality, I think I can say that an elderly person was found dead of a head wound. The confused spouse claimed to have hit the person with an ashtray, but the ashtray showed no traces of blood. The back door was standing open. Untangling the forensic evidence to explain how the person died was a formidable undertaking.

I like to explore these ambiguous situations because they force my protagonist, RCMP Constable Danutia Dranchuk, to pay attention to detail, to learn when to trust her instincts and when not to, and to come to terms with mistakes she inevitably makes.

In A Deadly Little List, for example, a man is found dead in an isolated cabin with a gun in his hand, a suicide note nearby. The RCMP sergeant in charge accepts that the man has committed suicide. The attending physician argues that the man has been murdered. Danutia’s boss wants the case closed so as not to offend a powerful developer. In the absence of clear-cut evidence, what should she do?

In Sitting Lady Sutra, in contrast, it is clear that three women have been strangled. The question is, were they killed by the same person? My intention here is to create a situation in which to explore the differences between a planned, deliberate act of murder (first degree murder) and a “spur of the moment” reaction to a situation (second degree murder). This important distinction is sometimes difficult to make, not only in real-life courtroom proceedings, but also in the creation of complex fictional characters. It is all too easy to create cardboard villains who are “bad people”; it is much more difficult to create believable ordinary people who do terrible things.

And how that can happen is the mystery at the heart of murder.

Kay Stewart was co-chair of Bloody Words 2011 and is a past president of Crime Writers of Canada. Sitting Lady Sutra (TouchWood, March 2011) is the second in the Danutia Dranchuk series of mysteries. The first, A Deadly Little List, was co-written by Kay and her husband Chris Bullock, with whom she is working on the third novel. She lives in Victoria, BC.

Hilary MacLeod - Old Fashioned Killer

2011-10-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

NO CSI I

I’m not CSI. When it comes to killing, I’m old fashioned. I like the old standards, the classics. A blunt instrument. A sharp object. A push off a cliff.

I know that forensics are fashionable, but I’m not that kind of girl. I like a nice clean killing, where it’s pretty clear how it’s done. The how, for me, is not the story – it’s why and who.

In “Revenge of the Lobster Lover,” I killed off my very first victim by electrocution. It was meant to be a simple “offing”. Chef meets lobster stunner, a faulty one which he grips in his hand as he goes flying back into a pond. There’s a concrete floor. Questionable wiring. I threw it all in, because it’s not easy to electrocute someone. No less than Louise Penny discovered for her book, “Dead Cold,” that it’s almost impossible to kill someone by electrocution. I found, like Louise, that I had to create the right circumstances.

That took research. Even so, I think most people would not have questioned an electrocution – not with all those warnings we get on toasters and lamps.

I did back and forth emails with a scientist for a geographical event in that first book. He said it couldn’t happen in the way I wanted it to in the place where the book is set. In science. But in fiction, he said: “It’s your story. You can do what you want.” So I did. No one’s called me on it.

I’m more interested in the scene of death than in the means. “Revenge of the Lobster Lover” begins with a lobster climbing up a corpse’s chest looking for food – and finding it in the dead man’s mouth.
I
“Mind Over Mussels” starts with a body on the beach, dressed like Jimi Hendrix, his head split open by an axe, gulls and crows feasting on the contents of the wound.

That’s the detail I like to pay attention to: the ugly aftermath of death – and before it, the moment of death itself. This, I hope, will give readers – if not gulls and lobsters – something to chew on that’s as meaty as a forensics feast.

The truth may be that I’m lazy, but I’m also not really interested in the intricacies of autopsies or plots that involve highly technical means of dispatching the victim.

Poisoning, stabbing, bashing to death are time-honoured and effective ways of getting rid of someone. Once that’s dealt with, as swiftly, as believably and with as little fuss as possible, I can get on with the story. How many suspects can I manufacture? How close can I come to giving away the identity of the killer, while keeping the reader in the dark until the very last?

I like to play it close to the line. I like to very nearly give it away, so that after they finish, readers go back through the book to check where the giveaways were. And to check up on me. To see that I didn’t cheat them of a clue, a way of knowing whodunit. It always satisfies me to hear a reader say: “I didn’t guess. I didn’t know until the end.”

That’s one task we must all accomplish, whether we do it forensically or otherwise.

And we have to satisfy the why. Hate. Revenge. Lust. Thwarted Love. Greed. Desire. Most of our nastier traits. Murder is a crime of passion, so I can’t get with plots that involve highly technical means of killing.

The police procedural is not my game either. It seems like work. It’s one of the reasons why I chose an isolated location for the setting of The Shores series. An isolated backwater on an isolated island. Police presence is spotty, and when it appears, maverick, so I don’t have to worry about procedure too much. I’ll worry about it even less in the future, as my Mountie of choice begins to “turn” and become more like the villagers than her colleagues far off on the other side of the island.

I said I was lazy. And old-fashioned. If you’re looking for forensics, you’ll have to knock on someone else’s door. Mine is open to story and character and, now that I’ve thought of it, to the image of a victim being pushed off a cliff. Or blown off by a wind turbine?

Possible? If it isn’t, I’ll do my best to make it so.

Hilary MacLeod is the author of two mystery novels in The Shores series: “Revenge of the Lobster Lover” and “Mind Over Mussels.” The third will be published in 2012. Hilary is a former CBC host, who currently teaches writing and announcing in the school of Media Studies at Loyalist College.

Cheryl Kaye Tardif - Dexter Morgan Move Over

2011-09-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

There's a New Serial Killer in Town!

On the theme of how to kill, I'd like to introduce you to Myrtle Murphy, a serial killer you'll hate to love. Myrtle isn't your average serial killer and definitely no Dexter, but when she has a bone to pick, the rest of the body isn't too far behind. And if she ever offers you a cup of tea, watch out!

Myrtle is a simple woman with simple needs, and since the rat poison was readily at hand, it makes the most sense. Why should she go out of her way to ‘off’ dear old Norm? Poison is sure to do the trick. And since he always has tea at night... the only hard part for Myrtle was trying to figure out how much sugar was needed to mask the taste.

Myrtle is the "star" of three short stories featured in my horror anthology Skeletons in the Closet & Other Creepy Stories. In A Grave Error, Myrtle, a woman in her early sixties, has had enough of her lazy, good-for-nothing husband Norman. While Norman is busy with his "mid-life crisis," Myrtle is having a "Norman crisis." A little something in his evening tea will take care of him.

In the second story, Death of an Old Cow, Myrtle finds an unexpected visitor on her doorstep. Her snooty, interfering, demanding mother-in-law. 50 Ways to Kill Your Mother (in-law)? Well, all it really takes is one, and an evening of cow-tipping and a handful of drunken rednecks.

I won't tell you about Myrtle's third victim, but I will tell you how Myrtle Murphy was born. While participating in a small writers' group, we issued ourselves a challenge. We were to write a story that incorporated three elements: spilled orange juice, a ketchup bottle exploding and one other that I can't recall. What I do know is that I "won" the challenge after reading my story to our group. They loved Myrtle.

Yes, there are 50 Ways to Kill Your Lover...and Your Mother (in-law). But as Myrtle figured out, all you really need is one.

"Skeletons in the Closet is a thoroughly entertaining and unabashedly Canadian collection of horror shorts - a straightforward, in-your-face, goosebump raising, skin crawling creep fest with brilliantly conceived endings." —Paul Weiss, Top 1000 Amazon Reviewer

"If you like Stephen King's quirky short stories or are a fan of the Twilight Zone, you will enjoy "Skeletons in the Closet" from author Cheryl Kaye Tardif." — John Zur

Skeletons in the Closet & Other Creepy Stories features thirteen of my personal favourite shorts, some of which have been previously published and some that are new. You can enter the closet by picking up the ebook edition at Amazon or Smashwords, or the paperback at Amazon or other retailers.

Cheryl Kaye Tardif is a bestselling suspense author who resides in Edmonton, Alberta. She is best known for her novels, Whale Song, Divine Intervention and Children of the Fog.

You can learn more about Cheryl by visiting http://www.cherylktardif.com or http://www.cherylktardif.blogspot.com.
Connect with her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cherylktardif.
Like her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cheryl-Kaye-Tardif-novels/29769736630

There Must Be Fifty Ways to Kill Your Lover

2011-09-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

With apologies to Paul Simon....

There Must Be 50 Ways to Kill Your Lover

When you’re a crime writer it’s handy if you have
A few experts in your pocket
They’ll tell you death isn’t fast as they all say
Or CSI able to just lock it

In life the detectives almost know right from the start
Cause guilty parties tend to hover
The trick is finding enough proof to take to court
Still, there must be fifty ways to kill your lover
Fifty ways to kill your lover

Stiletto in the back, Jack
No elaborate plan, Stan
A gun isn’t coy, Roy
Long as you can get free
Poison in the stew, Lou
Don’t have to be fancy, Nancy
“Accidental” O.D., Lee
Long as you can get free

I’ve learned that eating poison isn’t very fast
Best you make it look accidental
The reason assassins shoot you in the head, is
To make conversation incidental

A crime writer can use these ploys to heighten the suspense
Drive the reader from cover to cover
Beware of holes that leave the reader shaking head, still
There must be fifty ways to kill your lover
Fifty ways to kill your lover

Stiletto in the back, Jack
No elaborate plan, Stan
A gun isn’t coy, Roy
Long as you can get free
Poison in the stew, Lou
Don’t have to be fancy, Nancy
“Accidental” O.D., Lee
Long as you can get free

This murder of a classic song is the beginning of the new NCWM Blog theme. Murder isn't as easy to write as it is to commit. For one thing, unlike most criminals, crime writers have to be clever and entertaining and the killer can't get caught until the final chapter.

More on the theme: Seven Ways NOT to Kill Your Lover

If you want a source for getting the murder right: Forensics4Fiction

On Location with DJ McIntosh

2011-08-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Other Eyes

In real estate parlance, the most familiar line is “location, location, location.” Buy the least expensive property in the hottest neighbourhood and eventually you’ll make a killing. Choosing the right setting can often be a make or break deal too, for a new writer especially. The best manage to make “location” a central feature, almost a character, in their novels. Who can forget James Lee Burke’s New Orleans or Phillip Chandler’s L.A.?

An equally familiar motto for authors is: “write what you know.” And writers who are intimately familiar with their landscape, many having grown up in the setting they’ve chosen, often craft work that really resonates and convinces the reader that she is entering a real world.

In The Witch of Babylon, I chose to ignore all this good advice and write about Iraq, a place I’d never seen and couldn’t travel to. The novel opens during the initial invasion of Baghdad and still today is extremely dangerous, even for heavily armed troops. That I was able to write about it all is due almost entirely to the tireless and casualty laden work of journalists and photographers. I watched hours of footage, primarily on CNN, read blogs, newspaper articles and books of photographs about the war. The vivid images and hair-raising descriptions of the calamities that befell Iraqi people during the initial bombing campaign and then through the long, slow disintegration of their society, affected me deeply. I hoped that in a very small way, the pale imitation reflected in my own writing, would give some impression of that landscape of terror.

Scott Taylor in Iraq

When I set out to write about Iraq, I hadn’t imagined that one of the best things about the task would be who I came to know because of the book. A former member of the Canadian forces, Scott Taylor, the talented publisher of Canada’s military magazine, Esprit de Corps, is one such new friend. The audience at my book launch was glued to their seats watching a video Scott produced with National Geographic, a simulated re-creation of the time, as an unembedded reporter in Iraq; he was kidnapped and tortured by the radical Islamist group Ansar Al-Islam.

Nuri Kino, Palme D'Or recipient

The novel is about Assyrians, both ancient and modern-day. Assyrians of the past not only forged a great empire but also made memorable contributions to applied science, art, literature and philosophy. Especially impressive, Assyrians have maintained a cultural identity for over four thousand years. It was through my novel that I became friends with Nuri Kino, an investigative journalist of Assyrian descent who is becoming a legend on his own account for his accomplishments in Sweden, Europe and the Near East. Nuri, who has been awarded the European Parliament Prize for Journalism and the Palme D’Or for his work, has taken many risks to break important stories on corruption, pedophile crime, refugee victimization, espionage and the suffering of cultural minorities in Iraq.

The title of this piece – on location – is thus ironic. For I was anything but. I depended on other eyes and hearts for a glimpse of what combat was really like. Aside from the military, journalists like Scott Taylor and Nuri Kino are the first to arrive and often the last to leave active war zones. 140 journalists have died since the onset of the Iraq war. I stand in awe of the sacrifice they’ve made and the hardship endured to bring the stories and images of battle to our living rooms.

D. J. McIntosh is a Toronto-based writer of novels and short mystery fiction. Her first novel, The Witch of Babylon, was published by Penguin Canada in June 2011. It won the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Unpublished Crime Novel and was a finalist for the 2007 CWA Debut Dagger Award. The Witch of Babylon is an antiquities thriller featuring John Madison, a New York art dealer caught in the aftermath of the Baghdad Museum looting.

This is the last of the Summer Gettaway location-themed posts. Next up, There Must be 50 Ways to Kill Your Lover: How mystery and suspense authors "off" their characters (it's not as easy as it looks).

On Location with Garry Ryan

2011-08-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Home is Also a Location

Ever notice how a person’s tone of voice often reveals way more than the words being used? There’s this tone people use when I say I’m going to be babysitting my grandkids after my daughter goes back to work.

The underlying message in the tone usually falls under two categories: Have you lost your mind? and Have you lost your manly manliness?

The former has been in question for so long that it really sounds more like a statement of fact.

The latter has been in question ever since I started writing mysteries with a gay protagonist. An interesting aside to this matter of manliness is that macho macho men often run for cover when a nasty diaper needs changing. Maybe you can figure that one out.

Either way, I’m really looking forward to being around the grandkids. One is three and a half while the other just had her first birthday. It’s going to be busy, it’s going to be frustrating, and it’s going to be fun. The odds are that it won’t be boring.

As far as the writing goes, kids help create a stimulating environment. My grandson likes rainbows. We have a front door with coloured glass that creates rainbows on the floor in the morning. He gets a kick out of seeing the rainbows on his feet or hands. And that idea worked its way into a scene in an upcoming novel.

There is the worry that their demands will result in less writing time. And, in time, that worry will either become a reality or something else that really wasn’t worth worrying about.

Garry Ryan was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, where he lives today. He received a B.Ed. and a Diploma in Educational Psychology from the University of Calgary, and taught English and Creative Writing to junior high and high school students before retiring in 2009.

In 2009, he was awarded the Freedom of Expression Award in Calgary, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the arts community in Calgary. The Lucky Elephant Restaurant won the 2007 Lambda Literary Award.

www.garryryan.ca

On Location with Sherry Isaac

2011-08-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

Location Inspiration

I honeymooned in Phuket, Thailand. Before I went, while I was there, after I go home, the same question rang in my ears: Are you going to set a story there? Even my husband, a non-reader, unless you count TV Guide and Motocross Weekly, wanted to know. Why?

Location. Matters.

Waterfront, property, rocky ravines, subdivisions that back onto conservation areas. Near schools, public transport or the foot of the Rocky Mountains. In real estate and in fiction, location matters.

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series begins on the craggy moors of Scotland. Like hero Jamie Fraser, Scotland is rugged, sexy, and just different enough for a modern-day North American audience to be exotic.

Location gives flavour, an edge, to a story. Not every PI novel opening chapter is set in a smoky lounge. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone jogs every morning on the beaches of Santa Teresa, a California city at the ocean’s edge.

Santa Teresa is fictional. Grafton could have set a pin anywhere on a map. She didn’t. Kinsey’s idea of a balanced diet is a fast food burger and fries, she cuts her hair with nail scissors, and owns one dress. Not your typical California girl.

And that works.

It works because it makes Kinsey interesting, multi-dimensional and flawed, oh, so flawed. Location is important because it is where Kinsey lives, and this, perhaps more than a point on the map, is what is important. It is where she’s gathered odd, lovable characters who become her surrogate family as the series unfolds. It is a family loner Kinsey will do anything to protect.

With location, anything is possible. Hard to imagine the isolation of Ward’s Island for Lynda Simmons’ Island Girl was an accident. Early onset Alzheimer’s has put Ruby Donaldson in a fast decline. Ruby’s mind drifts like an abandoned oar on the water, her memories as elusive as the waves that pound the shore.

On a weekend spent in the majestic Banff Springs Hotel, a story idea came to mind. More caper than thriller, it is in the idea file awaiting development, yet roaming the halls of the historic hotel, it was easy to see how Stephen King’s imagination was piqued by the silent corridors of The Stanley Hotel. In a similar fashion, among the crumbling stones of a century-old cemetery, the idea behind the title short story in my collection, Storyteller, took root.

Will I set a story in Thailand? After another trip, much exploration and a ton of research, why not? Possibilities are endless as the locations: a fishing perch in Indonesia, Robben Island, Dealey Plaza, 19th Century South Carolina or the northern shores of Lake Huron.

Always, always, I’ll scout locations that, like Jamie & Claire’s Scotland, are familiar enough to be comfortable, beautiful enough to be romantic, foreign enough to be exotic.

Where is your favourite book set? Leave a comment and let us know!

Winner of The Alice Munro Short Story Award, Sherry Isaac’s tales of life, love and forgiveness that transcend all things, including the grave, appear online and in print. Her first collection of shorts, Storyteller, debuts July 2011. For more information, or to order an autographed copy, click HERE.

On Location with Alison Bruce

2011-08-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

Why would a Canadian set her story in Texas?
Blame it on Mexico.

My sister and I had whooping cough. I was five; Joanne was two. She was the reason we had to seek out a warm, dry climate for Christmas instead of visiting family in Montreal. Since my parents weren’t exactly flush with funds, they packed up my father’s company station wagon and we drove south, headed for Mazatlan.

With the self-centred clarity of a child, I only remember the parts of the trip that had an impact on me. I remember the switchback roads in the mountains. Dad loved them. Mum and Joanne were throwing up. Me - who was car sick on a straight road - was morbidly fascinated by the sheer drops out the side window.

I remember eating peeled shrimp like candy... and my first real pineapple.

When we finally reached the beach, I stepped on a crab and was scared of the sand for years after.

For some reason, I also remembered Laredo. I don’t remember much about the town except the name. It etched itself on my consciousness; the sound of the word was as exotic and exciting to me as Paris or Istanbul might be to someone else.

Travelling to Mexico became a family habit for a while - especially after we acquired a camper. It was in the camper that I started reading Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. I had run out of Georgette Heyer and had not yet developed an interest in the mysteries my mother brought along for the trip. Dad gave me a copy of Riders of the Purple Sage, followed a couple of L’Amour’s short story collections. Suddenly I started taking an interest in the country we were travelling through. The United States - particularly Texas - ceased to be a geographic obstacle between home and our destination.

"Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen." - Louis L'Amour

When I needed to research Texas history and geography for Under A Texas Star, memories of those trips floated up to the surface.

One other trip cinched the deal – but it wasn’t one I took. My parents decided to go to Mexico when my mother retired. The family camper was long gone. Instead they outfitted a van with a kitchenette, bed and porta-potty. Feeling a bit envious, I wished them bon voyage one chill November morning. A couple of days later, they called from the Mexican border.

They had forgotten the vehicle permit. They couldn’t get into Mexico.

Stifling a laugh that I would have paid dearly for, I suggested they visit Texas while they were there – and bring back guide books. I was setting my mystery in the old west.

Alison Bruce started writing stories when she was twelve and hasn’t stopped yet. Under A Texas Star is her first published novel.

"...This novel is filled with accurate settings, genuine voice, and unexpected humor. And if you're more interested in the thriller or detective or romance or mystery genre, there is enough of a romance angle and an in-depth murder investigation to satisfy everyone." Amazon.com Review

"Alison Bruce has crafted a heroine every red blooded postmodern female wishes she were..." Amazon.ca review

www.alisonbruce.ca
www.alisonebruce.blogspot.com
nighthawktalk.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/alisonbruce.books

On Location with Donna Carrick

2011-07-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

"I want to be a part of it

New York, New York"

Being part of it:
The Indie Book Event,
July 30, 2011, NYC

Yesterday was an exciting day at chez Carrick. Alex and I were up before the crack of dawn, all in a tizzy over our trip to The Big Apple! But seriously, folks, we were a “well-oiled machine”. We made it to the Harbourfront in time to see the sun cast the Island ferry in morning brilliance.

Conference co-ordinators were thrilled with the success of this first-ever Indie Book Event. Sponsor Foozago Books did a fabulous job with promotion and signage, with the full support of staff at The New Yorker Hotel.

Imagine my delight when we arrived in the Crystal Ballroom of The New Yorker Hotel and discovered the sign with my name on it! Thank goodness, the room was nearly empty at the time, as everyone had left for lunch. I was able to more or less recover my composure before they returned.

We took advantage of the mid-day break to explore the streets of the big town. A quick stop at Macy’s followed by Caribbean music and grilled delights at Tad’s Steak House.

What’s a trip to New York City without without a little sight-seeing? The Empire State Building dominated the skyline, perhaps waiting for me to climb it? (Ha!)

Times Square was a crunch of bodies, vehicles, signs and videos – as colourful as any place I’ve ever been. Yellow Taxis filled the streets, zooming about amidst blaring horns in the summer heat. Eveything moved at a ‘take-your-life-in-your-hands’ pace, and yes, our taxi was rear-ended before the day was done.

It’s easy to see why New Yorkers love their city, and why so many incidental travelers find themselves hooked on the sense of exuberance that pervades the streets. I was personally surprised at how much alike Toronto and New York are in personality. Of course, New York is bigger, louder, hotter and MORE, but at its core, it felt very familiar to me. I could imagine it populated by artists, writers, musicians….

But I digress. After all, the day was really “all about the books”. Alex and I were warmly welcomed and finally had the chance to meet some of our closest on-line book industry friends face-to-face. The co-ordinators even invited me to do a brief reading from The First Excellence.

Donna Carrick is the author of The First Excellence ~ Fa-ling’s Map, Gold And Fishes, The Noon God, all available in both print and e-reader editions, as well as her collection of 5 haunting stories for e-reader only, Sept-Iles and other places. Her novel, The First Excellence, is the recipient of the first-ever Indie Book Event Award sponsored by Foozago Books in New York City.

On Location with Kay Stewart

2011-07-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Writing New Territory

The advice to “write about what you know” leads many novelists to set their books in familiar landscapes. Like Elizabeth George, who chose to write a series set in England rather than her native US, I like to explore unfamiliar settings.

Chris Bullock and I began A Deadly Little List, which takes place in Victoria and on Salt Spring Island, when we were living in Edmonton. I began Sitting Lady Sutra, which is set in and around Victoria, when we were living near Nanaimo. The third book in the series, which we’re working on now, will take our characters into new territory--the Peak District in England. Wherever the novels are set, my aim is to render the landscape as vividly as possible.

Here’s a brief passage from Sitting Lady Sutra, in which Parks Interpreter Joan Goodman makes a gruesome discovery during a routine inspection at Sitting Lady Falls:

The path was steep and rocky here, chewed up by the ground crew and not restored. Clutching at bushes when her hiking boots threatened to slip, Joan worked her way close to where the bridge had been. The ground crew had been out the morning after the Labor Day storm, clearing paths. They’d taken off the top twenty feet or so of the fallen Douglas fir, enough to assess the damage. Once the decision to reroute the trail had been made, the splintered bridge had been removed. Only the footings remained on either side of what in the spring was a marshy area rank with skunk cabbage. Now, though the ground was dry underfoot, there was still a strong odor, perhaps of rotting vegetation stirred up by the workers.

The trunk of the fir had been left as a nurse log for new growth. Gazing up the gully towards the exposed rootball, Joan caught a glimpse of something pink. A surveyor’s ribbon, she surmised, left behind by the workers. It was almost hidden in the undergrowth, but still it nagged at her. She scrambled up to remove it.

Not plastic but faded cloth, she realized when she was closer, a strap of some kind. The smell she’d thought was rotting vegetation was much stronger here, a carrion smell. A cougar must have left his kill nearby. Bending down, she grabbed hold and yanked at the strap. It tore, she heard it, but it didn’t come free. She reached through the ferns and salal and felt around. Her fingers encountered a sticky, pulpy mass and then something bony and her stomach heaved.

It’s only an animal crushed when the tree fell, she told herself. Yet she couldn’t quite square that comforting thought with the pink strap that lay torn and soiled among the fallen branches.

Kay Stewart was co-chair of Bloody Words 2011 and is a past president of Crime Writers of Canada. Sitting Lady Sutra (TouchWood, March 2011) is the second in the Danutia Dranchuk series of mysteries. The first, A Deadly Little List, was co-written by Kay and her husband Chris Bullock, with whom she is working on the third novel. She lives in Victoria, BC.

On Location with Howard Shrier

2011-07-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

Scouting Locations

Location has been critical in all my books, whether in Toronto, Buffalo, Chicago, Boston -- where my upcoming Geller book, Boston Cream, is set -- or Montreal, where book four takes place. And my standalone thriller Lostport, coming this summer as an amazon e-book, is set on the Erie Canal northeast of Buffalo.

All of these took extensive research and visits. In some cases, I conducted searches like a film location scout, pounding the streets or driving around with a camera and voice recorder. And nowhere more so than in Toronto.

Take the climactic scene in Buffalo Jump, when Jonah Geller and a half-blind Dante Ryan flee two gunmen in the Don Valley where the river, Pottery Road and the railroad converge. It couldn't have happened anywhere else. My friend Karl Thompson and I drove for hours near the waterfront to find out where Simon Birk's towers were going to be built, and I walked some fifty miles in five days in Chicago, documenting every construction project in a city where the skyscraper, to find the site of Birk's unfinished tower.

I've been lucky to know people in Boston and upstate New York who've been enormously helpful. We would talk about plot and they would come up with ideas of places for me to visit. Lostport is based on a canal town called Lockport, which I never would have discovered if not for my wife's relatives in Buffalo. And her contacts in Boston led me right to Summit Path, which plays a critical role in Boston Cream, coming January 31 from Random House.

Howard was born and raised in Montreal, where he earned an Honours Degree in Journalism and Creative Writing at Concordia University. He began his writing career in 1979 as a crime reporter for a Montreal daily and has since worked in a wide variety of media, including journalism, theatre, television, sketch comedy and improv. He has also been a senior communications advisor to government agencies. Howard now lives in Toronto with his wife and sons. Please visit his website at howardshrier.com .

(Also check out H2Ontario - an article about Toronto's waterfront by Howard Shrier)

On Location with R.J. Harlick

2011-07-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

The Location sets the Colour

As you may have noticed colour plays a key role in the titles of my Meg Harris mystery series. I have always been attracted to the vibrant hues that define our world. I won’t say that I am the first author to use colour in their titles. John D. MacDonald, one of my favourite mystery authors, employed it in his.

When it came time to come up with a colour for my next mystery, the fifth in the series, I immediately honed in on green. Taking place in summer, it seemed fitting that the colour chosen should be what most defines my Quebec wilderness setting at that time of year. There are so many shades, from a light airy lime green, to a rich emboldened emerald green and ultimately flowing into the dark end of the spectrum with a deep shadowy forest green.

In my mind I saw death lying sprawled in the living greens of feathery ferns or on a lush carpet of moss. Perhaps it is caught up in the tangled grasses of a beaver swamp. Or better yet lurking deep within the forest where the greens are so dark they are almost black. And so the title A Green Place for Dying was born.

The covers for my previous books have used a photo that I have taken either of my Quebec wilderness or as in the case of Arctic Blue Death, a photo from Baffin Island, namely the cemetery in Iqaluit. So last summer with camera in hand I wandered around the woods that surround my log cabin, snapping pictures I thought captured the myriad of greens that abound. I wanted to share some of these with you. The one my publisher chose has a sense of mystery to it, a secret destination. You, the reader must walk along its path to find out what lies just over the brow.

RJ Harlick is an escapee from the high tech jungle.Originally from Toronto, she, with her husband, Jim, and giant poodle, DeMontigny, now bides her time between her home in Ottawa and a log cabin in West Quebec. A lover of the outdoors, she spends much of her time roaming the forests of the Outaouais. Because of this love for the untamed wilds, she decided that she would bring its seductive allure alive in her writings. This she has done in the Meg Harris mystery series where the wilderness setting plays almost as large a role as her protagonist Meg Harris.

On Location with John Moss

2011-07-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

What do Easter Island, Baffin Island and Toronto have in common?

Location plays an important role in my newest Quin and Morgan mystery, Reluctant Dead, released in mid-June.

Location is never simply a background in my novels; it determines action. In Still Waters, both the Rosedale setting in Toronto and the area around Blair in Waterloo County are integral to the developing mystery as well as to the characters’ lives.

Grave Doubts again features Toronto, which is fitting since David Morgan and Miranda Quin are both Detective Sergeants who work homicide with the Toronto Police Service, but it is the confusion of the historical and contemporary city due to a corpse revealed in the demolition of a colonial house that leads to suspense and horror. The resolution takes place in the Owen Sound area and, for a truly harrowing episode, underwater in a wreck near Tobermoray.

In Reluctant Dead, Quin takes a sabbatical to Easter Island in the South Pacific to write a mystery novel and stumbles into a plot with international implications. Morgan discovers a murder on Toronto Island that leads him to the Canadian Arctic. Ultimately, the two stories connect. Easter Island, with its fabled past, and Baffin Island, with its austere and forbidding conditions, lead Morgan and Miranda through chilling adventures that are only resolved when they get back together in downtown Toronto.

John Moss has backpacked extensively on Baffin Island and accompanied Beverley Haun on research trips to Easter Island. In Reluctant Dead, the third Quin and Morgan mystery, these interests come together. The next in the series, “The Dead Scholar,” stays closer to home and reaches farther afield. John and Beverley share a stone farmhouse in Peterborough, Ontario.
www.johnmoss.ca

On Location with Melodie Campbell

2011-06-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

On Location…

in the west of England, long ago…

Sometimes you fall in love with a place. Never mind that it has not been in existence for several hundred years, or at least not in the family anymore. My particular place of love resides back in the days shortly after the Battle of Hastings, in a corner of England more known for sheep than people.

There is a piece of Shropshire that claims a part of my heart. The original castle, erected after Harold fell to William in 1066, went to ruin in the early 1500s. The ‘new’ abode, Hawkstone Park, was built in 1556; it was forfeited in 1906 to pay off the gambling debts of my rakish relative.

Tony Clegg-Hill (original name Huel) was the previous Viscount Clegg-Hill, and my late cousin. I adored him. He had that particular dry British wit that reminded me seriously of David Niven. It was his great-grandfather who lost the castle.

Tony would regale me with anecdotes about the family villains: the original Viscount Huel, who was basically a henchman for William the Conqueror. More recent rogues like Sir Rowland Hill gambled away anything that could be taken as a stake. It’s a damning history, yet a vibrant one. But not all the family were black sheep; one Lord Hill distinguished himself as the second in command to the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo. When Wellington was made Prime Minister in 1824, Hill succeeding him as commander in chief of the army. The coat of arms (which illustrates the family tree with all the crests of family intermarriage) is twelve feet long.

So when it came to writing Rowena Through the Wall, I had to feature my favorite place. The original Norman castle, with its rounded turrets, crenellations and merlons has been in my imagination for decades. Rowena walks through the wall to her ancestor’s land, and she falls in love with it too.

Melodie Campbell’s comic novel Rowena Through the Wall (Imajin Books) is available at Amazon.com and Smashwords.

Follow Melodie at Funny Girl Melodie

View trailer and read opening scene at http://melodiecampbell.com

On Location with Robert Landori

2011-06-18T23:23:00.000-07:00

A Good Memory is a Shortcut to Great Locations

I wrote my very first book on a dare, for a girl-friend whom I had indelicately criticised for reading trash. She had reposted with: “All right smart aleck, if you’re so intelligent why don’t you write me a book that’s better?

Within a year she was reading my first novel.

I hurried to finish the book because I had bet her a dinner that I could perform within twelve months. So I had to look for short-cuts and there was no time for researching “locations”. To solve this problem I delved into my memory banks and chose the venues I knew intimately: Montreal, the Laurentian Mountains, the hospital in which I had worked to earn money as an undergraduate at McGill, the countryside around the English public school I had attended, Georgetown near Washington etc…

I am a lucky man. My work has allowed me to travel far and wide, and to visit enough locations to “situate” at least ten novels.

Galindo’s Turn

(my first novel)

Before he became Robert Lonsdale his name was Bernard Lands.

He lived with his wife, Andrea, in a remote area in the Laurentian Mountains near Montreal. (Picture 1). Islamic terrorists, tipped off by a mole inside the CIA as to his real identity, attempted to assassinate him while he was cross-country skiing, but only managed to wound him.

He was treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital (Picture 2) where the assassins struck again, missed once more, but killed his wife.

Land fled to the Washington area and entered the CIA’s Employee Protection Program where they gave him a new name, a new face and a new identity. He became Robert Lonsdale an obscure analyst with the US Environmental Agency. He bought himself a condo in Georgetown (Picture 3) and started to work for the Agency’s super secret Counter-Terrorism and Counter Narcotics Division.

It took him a year to identify the mole who had betrayed him and whom he then hunted down and neutralized at Frensham Ponds in Surrey, England (Picture 4).

Robert Landori went to school in England, France, Switzerland and Hungary; of necessity he learned eight languages in the process. He completed his education at McGill University in Montreal, became a Chartered Accountant then traveled for over twenty years in the Caribbean and South America as an exporter‑importer, business consultant and trustee in bankruptcy.

Charged with espionage in Cuba, he spent sixty-six days in solitary confinement, and was eventually ‘let go’ without explanation. His experiences in prison prompted him to write his fifth book, Havana Harvest (a story about a Cuban general, condemned to death by the Castro regime).

His first book, GALINDO’S TURN, was the result of a challenge, twenty-five years ago, by a girlfriend to “write an intelligent book within a year”.

Shh... "The Agency’s super secret Counter-Terrorism and Counter Narcotics Division"

Summer Season - On Location

2011-06-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

Heat of the Crime:

A Summer of Dangerous Getaways

Location, location, location: the key to valuable real estate, a successful business, and atmosphere in a mystery or crime novel. Also the theme for the summer season here at the NCWM Blog.

From the exotic to the mundane, places often act as supporting characters in books.Whether the twin moons of an alternate world or the Twin Towers of pre-9/11 New York, landmarks place us in time and space. The cultures and laws of different countries allow events to occur that would be improbable in Canada. Just crossing our own country, the character of small town New Brunswick will be different from small town Alberta.

Summer is also a good time to go on book tours. The driving is better if nothing else. Several of our authors have hit the promotional trail already, visiting towns while going to and from Victoria BC for the Author Ellis Awards and Bloody Words conference.

Our first summer getaway starts next week with Robert Landori, author of Havana Harvest. He'll be telling us how location figured into his first novel - holiday photos included!

Postcards from Victoria - 3

2011-06-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

Bloody Words Begins

It seems like only yesterday that I was jetting off to the Canadian crime writing conference Bloody Words in Toronto, but it was in fact a whole year ago. And what a difference a year can make!

Last night’s Arthur Ellis Awards banquet is a case in point. Last year, I knew exactly one person when I walked into that restaurant in Toronto. (My aunt – she was my date.) Last night, after working as the banquet chair for over six months with an amazing team from the Crime Writers of Canada – it felt like old home week. I had met, or emailed, or Skyped or phoned every single one of the 75 people in attendance, and many others besides.

Deryn Collier
(For full story read Deryn's Blog: "Good Things Come")

"The Millionaires Club"

On the Range Panel

For more photos check out the CWC page on Facebook

Check out Writing the Open Range for more coverage of the weekend in Victoria.

Postcards from Victoria - 2

2011-06-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

June 2: Arthur Ellis Awards Tonight!

Hotel Grand Pacific, Victoria BC

Despite it being a dull grey day, Barbara Fradkin, Sue Pike and I had a fantastic, albeit windy trip through the Gulf Islands to Victoria. We met up with Sylvia Warsh and her husband on the trip. And now we are enjoying the luxury of the Grand Pacific Hotel and getting ready for the big dinner tonight. Can't wait to see who are the winners.

R.J. (Robin) Harlick

Banquet Chair Deryn Collier and MC Anthony Bidulka

For the winners list go to the CWC Arthur Winners Page or check out the National Post on Friday June 3.

Check out Arthur Ellis Awards on Facebook for more photos

Check out Writing the Open Range for more coverage of the weekend in Victoria.

More "Postcards from Victoria" to come...

Postcards from Victoria - 1

2011-06-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

This year the Arthur Ellis Awards Banquet, Crime Writers of Canada AGM and the Bloody Words conference are taking place in beautiful Victoria BC. Unfortunately, I can't be there. Instead, I asked fellow CWC members to send me "postcards" of their trip.

June 1: Getting there is half the fun...

   I'm driving from Calgary to Victoria to attend the Bloody Words conference. Along the way, I stopped at three bookstores to sign copies of my novel Deadly Fall.
    Vernon, BC: A woman bought Deadly Fall for her 90 year-old father, a retired policeman. A man bought the novel for his mother as a belated Mother's Day gift. Another man told me his wife, an aspiring writer, is going to the Bloody Words conference. I hope to meet her there.
    Kelowna, BC: Interesting chats with an aspiring writer from COWS - Central Okanagan Writers' Society - and a Calgary woman who knows a couple of my writing friends.
    Kamloops, BC: Two of the bookstore staff members bought Deadly Fall. With luck, they'll love it and recommend it to customers. The three signings done - now I'm on real vacation.

Susan Calder

When I heard that Bloody Words was to be held in Victoria, I knew it was the perfect opportunity for me to pay a visit to Nelson, B.C., the inspiration for the fictional town of Trafalgar, B.C. in my Constable Molly Smith novels. On May 10th, I set off from Ottawa, Ontario. The trip began on a low note when I found the side window of the car smashed and my GPS stolen. However, the window was soon repaired and a new GPS installed. Since then I've battled floods in Manitoba, isolation in Saksatchewan, dinosaurs in Alberta, tricky mountain roads in British Columbia. And a moose attack somewhere in my imagination.

Vicki Delany

This is the magnificent view from my hotel room in the hockey capital of Canada, where the only thing on people's minds and lips is the Stanley Cup finals. With the first game tonight Hockey has taken over the entire town of Vancouver. Unfortunately tonight is also the night Barbara Fradkin and I are at the Vancouver Public Library reading from our latest books. What are the odds we'll have a sellout crowd, even a handful? But hey who cares as long as the Canucks win.

Tomorrow Barbara, Sue Pike and I make our way to Victoria via the ferry, a trip I have always wanted to do. See you all at the Arthur Ellis awards dinner.

RJ (Robin) Harlick

Sorry you're not here.

Garry

Victoria's gorgeous inner harbour - I'm getting set to MC Thursday night's Arthur Ellis Awards. The town is abuzz with the excitement of it all. Canucks? What Canucks...the Crime writers are in town!

Anthony Bidulka

Next... From the Arthur Ellis Awards Banquet

Gordon W. Dale - The Banal Villain

2011-05-29T22:31:00.000-07:00

Evil by Omission

As Hannah Arendt famously pointed out, the banality of some villains makes them all the more compelling. In the opening passages of Gordon W. Dale’s novel Fool’s Republic, the protagonist, Simon Wyley, is attended by a physician, the first of several seemingly bland bureaucrats through whose complicity he has been stripped of his rights and imprisoned against his will.

I float in an eight-by-eight cell of the purest clinical white: white walls, white sheets, white toilet, white sink, white light. Even the floor drain has been painted white. This drain worries me, sitting as it does in a slight recess in the floor, with no apparent purpose except to sluice away evidence. I stare at it, obsessed with images of red blood spilling down white tiles, like a pour painting by a trendy New York artist whose name I no longer recall.

I am attired in madhouse whites to match my cell: disposable briefs under white cotton pants, a white short-sleeved shirt, white slip-on canvas shoes without socks. My head has been shaved. I am denied access to a mirror, but no doubt my skull is also white, as white as the skin of my arms and hands. White skin over red blood.

It occurs to me that I am afraid.

They have stripped me of my name; I have become a number. I search my body for the telltale tattoo, but find nothing. Perhaps I have been marked in a way not detectable by the naked eye. The thought has nagged at me for some time, but now I shrug it off. What does it matter? My life has been a series of numbers: maternity ward number, student number, IQ number, juvenile corrections number, Social Security number, internal security file number. What difference could one more number possibly make? I’d let them number me till Judgment Day, if only they’d turn the goddamn light off, just for a minute. Just so I could rest my eyes.

Isaac Newton said that time flows equably, without relation to anything external. Imagine how much more subtle his thinking might have been if he’d been locked in an all-white room where time doesn’t flow at all but rather stops, becomes palpable, and takes on form. Time keeps up a companionable silence all morning, or at least what I fancifully decide to be morning. I have no real sense of morning or evening, of day or night. I am bathed in unrelenting white light. In white light time doesn’t flow; it lies on the floor.

I go to the sink and turn the handles of the faucet, yearning for the sound of water, for the sound of something passing. The handles turn silently and no water comes, not so much as a drip. I am alone in a silent desert of white light. Alone, but not unobserved. They watch me. I am particularly conscious of it every time I use the toilet. What do they hope to learn from observing me defecate? Nothing. They’re bureaucrats, mindlessly ticking off columns, pen-pushers completing forms. But, in truth, I don’t much resent their watching. I’ve done time enough in institutions to know that real privacy is what you keep in your head. What bothers me is that the toilet bowl flushes automatically when I stand up. There’s no relief to be found from the monochrome whiteness, not even in the sight of my own waste.

The cell door slides open. I crane my neck to see through the opening, desperate for a glimpse of color, a splash of something to tuck away and keep. Even a drab wall of army green would be a relief. But, to my disappointment, the outside hallway is painted the same blinding white as my cell. I regain my self-control, stare fixedly ahead. Desire is weakness. I can live without color.

A man wearing a white lab coat over a white jumpsuit enters my cell and the door closes silently behind him. He offers his hand, which I ignore, and mumbles his name, which I don’t catch. Apparently he’s a physician of some sort, come to check on my injuries. He carries himself with the same air of disheveled self-loathing Denholm Elliott affected as the abortionist in the first film version of Alfie. What transgressions, I wonder, have led him here? An excessive fondness for drink? An uncontrolled passion for little girls? For little boys? Mere professional incompetence, perhaps. I cannot look at him for long, and stare at the floor. But he’s obviously not regular military and for that I am grateful.

He asks me to remove my shirt and I do so with difficulty. He has me breathe in and out, then makes a show of examining my ribs.

“Have these been X-rayed?”

“No.”

“Well, they should be.”

I take from his tone that it’s never going to happen. An X-ray of a non-life-threatening injury is a privilege. And privileges are not extended to uncooperative detainees.

I struggle back into my shirt and he has me sit on the edge of the bunk so he can look at my facial injuries. He doesn’t like what he sees and when he examines my left eye there is a sharp intake of breath. He makes me follow his fingertip back and forth, up and down.

“Is your vision blurred?”

“No.”

He has me close my eyes, then bring my finger to the tip of my nose.

“Any nausea?”

“What are the charges against me?”

He runs his fingers over my skull, palpates the vertebrae in my neck.

“Dizziness?”

“Why have I not been given the benefit of counsel?”

“You have some contusions. No evidence of concussion. You’ll be fine.”

“I was drugged and blindfolded before being transported here. Where am I being held? What continent are we on?”

My questions seem to cause him personal pain. He opens his mouth to speak but, after a moment’s hesitation, simply shakes his head and turns away. He can only pat me clumsily on the shoulder. The door opens of its own volition and he departs and I am once more alone in the white light.

Time rolls onto its side and closes its eyes.

A finalist for the 2007 British Crimewriters Association Debut Dagger Award, Gordon W. Dale has lived in such disparate regions as the Sub-Arctic, the Canadian prairies and Central-East Africa, but presently makes his home in California. His novel Fool’s Republic was recently awarded Honorable Mention (general fiction category) by the San Francisco Book Festival.

Garry Ryan in the Big Bad Apple

2011-05-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

Mister Ryan Goes to New York

A running blog from the Big Bad Apple

Garry Ryan is in New York for the Lambda Awards. His latest Detective Ryan mystery, Smoked, has been shortlisted.

Direct from New York City... 3 posts and counting!

Post #1 Sent at 21:06/25/06/2011

I'm at a rented computer with a wonky space bar.

The LAMBDA awards take place tomorrow night at about this time.

New York is green and - as always - alive. The people are invariably friendly, polite, and helpful.
A lovely young couple directed me to a Thai restaurant. The seafood dish was amazing. And the margarita was a hit!
Good thing I only had one. Breakfast was the last meal and it's 9 PM here in New York.

I'm half a block away from a hotel where writers like Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Leonard Cohen, and Thomas Wolfe lived and wrote.
It really blows the mind.

Talk with you tomorrow.

Garry Ryan

Post #2 Sent at 07:56/26/05/2011

It's early. This place is awake.

There are signs that the city has been hit hard by the recession.
Lots of mental illness wandering the streets.
Yet, there's plenty of construction.
The stink of rotting garbage.
The bouquet of fresh cut flowers being delivered.
People going to work.
People picking garbage.
TRAFFIC!
And no one pays any attention to the road signs.
There is a rhythm here that takes a while to get used to.
And so many languages being spoken as you walk the streets.

Garry Ryan

Post #3 Sent at 11:32/26/05/2011

If you travel the subway,
along one of the blood vessels
to downtown New York
where hard hats rule over the streets and
diesel engines,
compressed air,
jack hammers,
cranes,
rebuild.
It takes maybe an hour to walk
past memorials
flowers
and security using mirrors to check the undersides
of trucks
and it feels ...
it feels like something new
is rising up out of the wreckage.
A new kind of city, perhaps?
A new kind of determined optimism?
A new kind of country?

Garry

Post #4 Sent at 09:10/27/05/2011

David Lennon's book Echoes won last night. Just finished reading it before the awards.
It's a good read with great characters. Met David at the awards. Very nice person.
Congratulations to him!

This morning it's sunny and hot in New York.
Off to breakfast and a new understanding of how to survive.
I figured out how the whole crossing the street thing works here.
It's very simple.
DON'T GET HIT!

Catching a plane home later today.

Thanks for reading along.

Garry

Catherine Astolfo - Evil Punished

2011-05-23T16:02:00.000-07:00

Despicable Him

I’ve always been fascinated by evil. Maybe that’s because I spent 34+ years in education. Of course, most children are not born wicked - though some people are, I think. It’s always been intriguing to me how one child who lives in terrible conditions can turn out to be kind, thoughtful and even an advocate for righteousness, while another whose home life is rather ordinary can be a sociopath or psychopath.

The heroine in my books is an elementary school principal whose own life has been touched by malevolence. Perhaps that’s why she’s drawn to circumstances that involve violence and terror. In my first novel, The Bridgeman, Emily Taylor discovers a monster in the midst of her small community and school.

When I first created this monster, I wrote him up as a character sketch. I’d been passing by a drawbridge in a little Ontario town one sunny afternoon when I noticed the operator in his little booth. Not one other pair of eyes appeared to be drawn to him. I thought about what might lie beneath a person who, on the surface, was an unassuming, hard-working individual. Invisible to most, he could be committing all kinds of nefarious deeds. One thing led to another and my “bad boy” morphed into a very evil man.

My books are somewhat dark and tend to deal with very grim circumstances in life. (Somewhat like Minette Walters, I’d like to think.) Now and then a reader asks me how on earth I came up with such topics (because I look so innocent, I guess). I always respond, “Have you read the newspaper lately?” I can’t help it – I am absolutely mesmerized by the evil that human beings inflict on one another, our fellow Earthlings, and the planet itself. Although that sounds perhaps very pessimistic and depressing, I am at heart an optimist. Thus writing mysteries is very satisfying because, in the end, good always triumphs.

In the case of The Bridgeman, my monster abuses animals. For instance, he manages, along with some malevolent partners who are truly vile, a puppy mill. At the time, my niece worked for a veterinarian who cared for animals released from these horrors by the Ontario Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I didn’t have to exaggerate or even imagine the conditions to which the poor innocent dogs were subjected: I simply recorded my niece’s firsthand experiences. As they say, truth is stranger (and sometimes more horrible) than fiction.

But the best part is that the monsters get their comeuppance; justice prevails. The animals are rescued. Peace reigns in my village once more and great lessons are learned. Despicable Him does not get to enjoy the fruits of his evil. I think I love to read mysteries partly because there is, almost always, a positive resolution, a hopeful, happy outcome. Unlike the stories you sometimes read in the newspaper, the bad boys (or despicable gals) are always punished.

Author of the Emily Taylor mysteries, Catherine is currently the President for Crime Writers of Canada (about to become Past President) and is a member of Sisters in Crime (Toronto). Winner of the Boney Pete Short Story Award, 2010 and Brampton Arts Acclaim Award, 2005 for The Bridgeman.

Next... Garry Ryan reports from the Big Bad Apple.

Kay Stewart - The Reformed Dastard

2011-05-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

Zero to Hero

Can a villain become an ordinary person, even a hero? That’s a question I explore in Sitting Lady Sutra through the character of Ritchie Taylor, a parolee who is forced to confront his failings not by the prison system but by a tragedy in his own life. This is how we meet Ritchie:

Hearing a car engine’s low hum, Ritchie Taylor dropped his armload of firewood and moved closer to the chain-link fence. This was not a tourist destination. The driver would see the sign saying William Head Institution and turn around, as the last one had.

An old Volvo the color of faded denim nosed through the trees and pulled into the parking lot. He’d told her not to come here, to meet him in town tomorrow, when he would be a free man. Still he waited to see who would get out, his eyes burning. She was a grown woman now, or almost. He wondered what she looked like. Dark and thin, like him, or blonde and busty like her mother? He’d asked her to send photos, but she hadn’t. Let it be a surprise, she’d said. His daughter.

The car door opened and a stoop-shouldered old fart emerged, straw hat in hand. He settled the hat on his head and made his slow way towards the entrance. Shit. Ritchie turned away.

What was he thinking anyway, she wouldn’t be driving; she wouldn’t be old enough even—or would she? He hadn’t seen her since he went in, that botched convenience store job. How old was she then? Two? “Nineteen months,” he heard Kelly’s querulous voice say. “Your own daughter, you’d think you’d remember.”

Truth was, he didn’t remember much from those days. Kelly’s voice, her long nose, her fingernails digging into his back when they made love. She’d come to see him at first, when he was in Ontario, though she wouldn’t bring the baby, said no child of hers was going to grow up knowing her dad was behind bars. After the riots he got transferred to BC, where the overcrowding wasn’t so bad, first Mountain, then William Head. That’s when they’d lost touch. It was easier, when you were doing time.

His time was almost up. Tomorrow he would be out of here, a free man. Or at least as free as you can be living in a halfway house, on parole. His mouth went dry. What if he couldn’t handle being out? Lots of guys couldn’t, people expecting stuff from you and you don’t know how to act, except the ways that got you into trouble in the first place. What did she expect from him, anyway? What did he know about being a parent? He should have told her to wait a month, till he got his shit together. Maybe he shouldn’t have answered her letter at all. But he had, and now who knew what would happen?

Kay Stewart is co-chair of Bloody Words 2011 to be held in Victoria June 3-5 and past president of Crime Writers of Canada. Sitting Lady Sutra (TouchWood, March 2011) is the second in the Danutia Dranchuk series of mysteries. The first, A Deadly Little List, was co-written by Kay and her husband Chris Bullock, with whom she is working on the third novel. She lives in Victoria, BC.

Next... Cathy Astolfo plums the source of evil.

Lou Allin - Smiling Evil

2011-05-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

ONE MAY SMILE AND SMILE

People ask me where I get my ideas. They come so fast I have to duck.

When I lived for nearly twenty years on Lake Wanapitei north of Sudbury, the first neighbour I met was a lonely man about fifty with a gorgeous property at the end of the road. Rumour had it that he had been accused of molesting his nephew ten years earlier but got off with a fine and probation. The "kid" was a liar and a thief, and opinions were divided as to whether "Ted" was guilty or not. Putting my mind in neutral, I observed him over the coming months.

People liked his generosity loaning tools and volunteering his backhoe, tractor, or snowplow. Eager to chat, he was also fond of issuing spur-of-the-moment invitations for steaks and wine or a boat ride. The problem was, he began "befriending" a poverty-stricken young single mother and her son at "church," miles away. Ted spoke often about the young woman's challenges without a husband for her boy. Visiting on many weekends, first with his mother, then alone, the "young lad" would be seen driving Ted's truck, motorcycle, and snowmobile. That's when I started to pull back, like Fran in the story, whose husband Larry is only too happy to find reasons to use Ted's gear and who insists that Ted be judged innocent without "ocular" proof.

"Don't be silly. What has anyone ever seen?" he tells his seething wife. The fact that Larry was falsely accused himself by a female student biases his opinion.

The ending of the story finds justice served during a raging blizzard. In actuality, the real Ted died alone after months in hospital with multiple health problems, and despite his wealth, his body was never even claimed by relatives. Like most child molesters, he was a perfect gentleman, kept an immaculate house, never swore, and looked like a senator. Hide in plain sight sums it up. What is imagined can be much worse than reality. Ted did make good burritos, though.

From "No Crime"

They saw the pair a month later as they took the garbage up to the box. Luckily Ted, not the boy, drove the Dodge. She had planned to make a remark. The old man addressed himself to Larry. "Gettin' on to winter. Guess Stevie and I'll have to put the bikes up." The boy was unsmiling, fiddling with the radio as a baseball game faded in and out. An expensive down parka had replaced his shabby coat.

Larry grinned so broadly that Fran's stomach tightened. "I'd like to use your grinder to sharpen the maul. Good dry oak, but some chunks need more splitting."

"Bring her up to the truck. Be jim-dandy tomorrow. Oak, eh? Thought you was a poor pensioner like me," Ted said. "Maybe Stevie can give you a hand with the piling. Make a real bushman out of him. Hey, did I tell you we're buyin' another snowmachine? I promised Stevie we'd see some country. Maybe follow the trails as far as Michigan. Right, Stevie?" The boy nodded vaguely and wiped at his nose. His eyes met Fran's briefly, then closed for a moment. How many times did the old man have to say the name? Like the cadences of a prayer.

Ted leaned over the seats to retrieve an Arctic Cat folder. You two ought to be thinkin' about gettin' one yourselves. See what you think of the 600cc. Real comfortable. One-up seat. Reverse. No bullwork. Al's you need is ...." He wriggled his right thumb on an invisible throttle.

While Larry ran like a puppy to fetch the tool, Fran stood awkwardly by the truck. Although she couldn't see into the high cab, the mirror had tipped when Ted reached back, and in its reflection she watched the man's strong hand snake toward the boy's. Stevie's face flushed, and his lip quivered. Ted's icy blue gaze was untroubled as he searched her face. "Any plans for Christmas, my dear?"

With a Ph.D. dissertation on Christopher Marlowe, the murdered English Renaissance spy, Lou Allin came naturally to a love of crime stories. Now retired from teaching police Report Writing and Presentations to Criminal Justice students at Cambrian College in Northern Ontario, she has left behind a plow truck, two snowblowers, two scoops, and five shovels, and resides in Sooke, BC.

www.louallin.com
www.bloodywords2011.com (Co-Chair)

Next... Kay Stewart

Gail Bowen - Hidden Evil

2011-05-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

The first Kilbourn re-released.

Villains, Vixens, and Other Not So Nice People

Kaleidoscope, the 13th Joanne Kilbourn novel, will be published by M&S in spring 2012. Over the course of the series, I’ve spent a fair amount of time pondering villainy and the villainous. I’m no closer now to understanding the mystery of what makes a person kill than I was the day I turned on my first Texas Instruments computer. One of my closest friends is an appeals court judge. She tells me that most murders are sad, sordid and mind-numbingly boring.

As writers, we know that inducing boredom is the one sin for which readers will never forgive us, so we endow our murderers with cunning, imagination and an insatiable desire for revenge and retribution. I have only resorted twice to villains who were pathological. In both cases, I needed that dark kink of personality to meet the exigencies of plot, but most of my villains are people whose personalities fall somewhere along the normal continuum of human behaviour.

The villain I have chosen as my favourite comes from my second novel, Murder at the Mendel. At this point, I was still establishing the character of my protagonist Joanne Kilbourn, and I was able to use Joanne’s blindness to the villain’s flaws to reveal Joanne’s own need for the parent she never had.

The excerpt I’m including comes near the end of the novel. In it, we see how a clever villain can use the love and trust of others to carry out the unspeakable. The passage begins with a quote from Graham Greene: “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”

That had been my moment. If I hadn’t gone back to my cottage for my shoes, I would have been the one who walked in and found them. But it was Izaak who found them. I was late. She had taken a risk with that poison. My father said that another half hour would have tipped the balance. But, of course, I would never have made X wait another half hour. She knew I would come. She knew she could count on me to make her plan work. And it had worked. Des was dead. Sally had been so shattered she was easily disposed of, and X was rich and free of an invalid husband and a daughter who would always be her rival. She had taken a risk, but she knew the risk was minimal because she had me.”

Gail Bowen’s series features Joanne Kilbourn, a university professor, sometime political columnist, and a wife, mother and grandmother. Descriptors that fit Gail too. The first six Joanne Kilbourn mysteries were made into TV movies. The series - which is now being re-released by McClelland & Stewart - has made Gail one of Canada’s most popular crime writers.
www.gailbowen.com

Next up... Lou Allin

Eileen Shuh - Brutal Bikers

2011-05-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

Katrina is thirteen, an orphan, grieving and alone. But she is more than that. She’s intelligent, beautiful, wealthy, and intrigued by the dangers of street life.

Shrug’s a giant of a man with a voice of thunder and eyes of granite. He has tattoos, a leather jacket with The Traz gang patch, and a motorbike. When he asks Katrina if she wants a ride, she makes a decision that will change her life forever...

Pepper, Shrug, Zed, Stack and Gator…
The Traz gang villains.

Brutal bikers. Drug dealers, arms dealers, murders. Their motives, their personalities, their lives—as different as their names. What do they want and why and just how far will they go to get it? With their bikes, their brotherhood, and their money comes power and with that power comes fear, rivalry, and betrayal.

The Traz bad boys strut their stuff, rev their Harley’s, proudly wear the orange patch—and watch their backs, knowing that those on both sides of the law are after them.

To youth at risk, The Traz offers an irresistible chance to belong, to share enormous power, to snub the communities that have rejected and neglected them. The gang promises to be the family for which they long. The Traz is enticing, intriguing, beguiling. It is speeding along pavement with just inches of air between biker and death. It is being vulnerable and powerful all at once.

To the adult gangsters who always need mules and street slaves, and sometimes even the odd murder, who like to have something between them and their deeds, someone to hide behind—to these adult gangsters, such eager youngsters are a dream come true.

Evil protagonists— Pepper, Shrug, Zed, Stack and Gator—there’s none worse than these.

See them in action and wish them the worst.

THE TRAZ coming in May 2011 as an eBook on Amazon and Smashwords.

Eileen Schuh lives with her husband in the remote northern boreal forests of Alberta, Canada. Drawing inspiration from the wilderness, she creates entire universes populated with fascinating characters doing intriguing things.

Schuh recently retired from a life of careers that varied from nurse to journalist to editor to business woman. She remains active in her adopted community of St. Paul and basks in the love and loyalty of an entire flotilla of family, friends and fans—virtual, imaginary, and real ones.

She invites you to visit her online:

Blog: http://eileenschuh.blogspot.com

Website: http://www.eileenschuh.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=609330070

Twitter: http://twitter.com/eileenschuh

Next... Gail Bowen

John Moss - Good Cop and Really Bad Cops

2011-05-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

Reluctant Dead

Murder casts a long shadow, reaching from fabled Easter Island in the South Pacific to the desolate shores of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Detective Miranda Quin of the Toronto Police Service takes time off to write a mystery in the tropics and gets trapped in a sinister plot with global implications. Her partner in homicide, David Morgan, is left alone to resolve the case of a beautiful corpse on a Toronto Island yacht and ends up precariously compromised in the mysterious north. Their stories converge when they both return to Toronto. They discover themselves trapped in a labyrinth of deadly complexity and the only way out is together. Much more than their own survival depends on it. Islands, they learn, are an illusion. Everything connects, especially when murder is involved.

The man inhaled deeply on a nearly dead cigarette hanging from his lips and for a moment his familiar features glistened in a ﬁery light. He was close enough for her to breathe the rank smell of tobacco. Suddenly
she kicked out at his head, twisting when she kicked so that as he reeled backward from the blow she landed on all fours. Damn it, she thought, I’m too old for this. She smoothed her dress down over her legs at the
same time as she grasped for the fallen man’s gun. He squirmed around, but she was faster. Holding the gun at his head she motioned him to stand up.

“You will not do this, señorina, I am policeman. Carabinaros.”

She struck him sharply across the cheek with the gun barrel.

“Do not, señora,” he said in a ﬁrm voice, while framing his face with his hands to ward off further blows.
Waving the pistol, she motioned for him to back into the clear light of the lounge where she could get a good look at him.

“We’ve met,” she said.

“Si. We have met. I did not hurt you, señora, señorina.”

He looked grotesque. The smashed stub of his cigarette was stuck to his lower lip but her kick had smeared ashes across one cheek, while the other cheek was livid with a gash of blood running from ear to
chin. She motioned for him to sit and when he hesitated, she lashed out with her open hand and pushed him down. He missed the chair and sprawled at her feet. She planted her sandalled foot across his neck and
pressed. She glared into his eyes. He was looking up the skirt of her dress. She rolled her sandal across his neck and stepped back.

He rose slowly to his feet, backed up a pace and sank into an easy chair. He was smiling.

“You will not kill me,” he said. “I am policeman.”

“From Santiago.”

“Si, you remember, from your hotel, I was not alone, señorina. You should give me the gun. It is a nice gun, no? Like you have in Canada? No, this is revolver like in United States of America, yes? You should give me the gun. My friend, he will shoot you, no problem. I will not shoot you.”

Miranda felt at an impasse. The man smiled; she could see tobacco stains on his teeth. Behind her, she could sense someone approaching along the corridor.

She heard the clicking action of a semi-automatic. She set the revolver down on a table.

“Gracias,” said the man, leaning forward to reach his gun.

A shot like a sharp sneeze pierced the air. The man sat back abruptly, as if he had been thrown. His eyes opened wide, he tried to smile but his features collapsed, he sat bolt upright for a moment, as Miranda took several deep breaths, then he slumped sideways on the chair. She stood absolutely still.
Slowly, a man edged by her into the light. The ﬁrst thing illuminated was his nametag, Te Ave Teao; she saw this even before his face or his gun. He kept his gun trained on her, not her head but her body. He was
not about to execute her, but it seemed likely he would shoot if she did not co-operate.

“There is another,” she said.

“No, he is dead.”

“You shot him?” She was surprised because she had heard nothing.

“He is dead,” said Te Ave Teao, opening the palm of his free hand and spreading his ﬁngers in a gesture that somehow indicated he had strangled the smoking man’s accomplice.

“Are they police?” she asked, trying to conceal the ﬂinching inside.

“Yes, they are very bad police. Now they are dead. Tonight, they will be buried; tomorrow, they were not ever here.”

“What about me?” said Miranda “What do you intend?”

“What do you intend, yourself, señora?”

“You have the gun.”

He leaned over and placed his semi-automatic on the table beside the dead man’s revolver, and turned his back to her, gazing out over the dazzling Paciﬁc.

JOHN MOSS has backpacked extensively on Baffin Island and accompanied Beverley Haun on research trips to Easter Island. In RELUCTANT DEAD, the third Quin and Morgan mystery, these interests come together. The next in the series, “The Dead Scholar,” stays closer to home and reaches farther afield. John and Beverley share a stone farmhouse in Peterborough, Ontario. www.johnmoss.ca

Next... Eileen Shuh brings out the bikers

Melodie Campbell - The Good, the Bad and the Utterly Clueless

2011-05-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

School For Burglars

He was a well-dressed burglar, Marge had to admit. The black turtleneck fit his lean body in a manner most Italian, and the jeans were unmistakably Gap. He was clean-shaven, dark haired, and wore a thin black mask a la Zorro. Not a bad look at all, she mused, although on the whole, damned inconvenient at the moment.

Marge leaned against the kitchen door frame and took a sip from her mug. He must be okay at the break and enter part, as Max hadn’t heard a thing. Well, if Max wouldn’t growl, she could.

“What do you want?” She said, drawling.

The Burglar looked up with a start. A shiny black pistol appeared in his hand.

“Your money,” he said in a low voice.

Marge laughed. “My money? You want my money? You and a thousand others, Zorro. Take a number and get in line.” This was too much. As if the bank report hadn’t been enough for one day. What else could bloody-well happen…

Marge eyed the intruder intently. Poor kid, he looked confused; this obviously hadn’t been a situation covered in course 101 at the School for Burglary. Marge watched him shift from one foot to the other, while trying to steady the gun.

She nodded to it. “Where’d you get the gun?”

The Burglar started. “WOT?”

“The black shiny thing in your hand. Where’d you get it?”

He looked down at the weapon. “This guy from Toronto…”

Marge snorted. “You kids, these days. Spoiled rotten. In my day, we had to go to Buffalo.” Marge took another sip. “Is it loaded?”

“Of course.”

“Then will you do me a favor? Can you aim for that chartreuse vase over there?” She pointed to a shelf in the adjoining dining room. “Ghastly thing. My mother-in-law gave it to me. Please shoot it.”

“No!”

“Then give it to me, and I’ll shoot it.” Marge set her mug down on the faded wood-grain countertop and reached for the pistol.

“Christ, no!” He appeared aghast. “It’ll make a noise!”

“Then why do you carry it if you don’t want to make a noise?”

The Burglar ran a shaky left hand through his hair. “To scare you.”

“Oh,” Marge said, carelessly. “Want some coffee? It’s Starbuck’s.” She reached for the pot on the counter. The Burglar yelped and dropped the gun. Both hands shot up to protect his face, and just as swiftly, Marge moved forward to pick up the firearm. She held it up in her right hand and peered down the sights.

“Christ, are you crazy?” The man in black peeked through fingers.

“Crazy?” Marge looked up, startled. “Am I crazy? You’re the one who comes bursting in here with a gun you don’t even have the decency to use, asking me for money. And you think I’m crazy? Have you looked at this place? Is there anything here you’d want?”

She marched into the dining room, signaling with the gun for the intruder to follow. An ancient bulldog lay sleeping in the sun in front of the bay window. He opened one eye, then closed it and rolled over.

Marge grabbed a bowl off the fireplace mantel with one hand. “Here. Like this? Take it. I hate it. Want the ashtray? It’s ugly.” She shoved the bowl into the burglar’s arms.

“Want this picture?” Her free hand reached for it. “It’s my husband. He’s a bum. Mother was right. Don’t you hate it when your mother’s right? You don’t want it? No? Either do I.” Marge threw the framed photo on the hardwood and stomped on it. The glass made a pretty bell-tinkle sound.

“Lady, you’re nuts!” He put the bowl carefully down on the dining table, and tried to inch his way back to the kitchen. The dog lifted his head and growled. All movement stopped.

“There isn’t a damn thing in this house worth a damn thing.” Marge grumbled and glanced around. So this is what her life had come to. Entertaining a Gap-clad burglar in the shoddy remains of a faded dream home. What could she begin to offer him that was worth taking? It was embarrassing, that’s what it was. There was a time when she would have been proud to show any thief through her stylish home, and there would have been lots to interest him, oh yes. But that was then and this was now. That was before the high-tech crash, and the mid-life crisis, and Bipsy or Popsy, or whoever the hell she was.

"School for Burglars" by Melodie Campbell, originally appearing in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine July/August 2008 and can be read in its entirety at melodiecampbell.com

Melodie has over 200 credits; she has won three awards for fiction, and has served as a judge for the Arthur Ellis Awards, and for the City of Mississauga Literary Awards. In addition to writing mystery and fantasy fiction, she has a parallel career as a humorist with over 100 publications in Canadian and U.S. newspapers and magazines. You can read her humour articles on her blog Funny Girl Melodie. Her first novel, Rowena Through the Wall is being released by Imajin Books, June 2011

Next up... John Moss and an excerpt from Reluctant Dead, being released this month.

Vicki Delany - Writing the Villain

2011-05-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

The Right Villain in the Right Place

One of the great conundrums in writing a crime novel in the traditional ‘mystery’ framework is the character known as the villain.

For lack of a better word, I’ll use villain here. To mean the bad guy or girl or the person who-dun-it. The villain, of course, doesn’t have to be villainous. They can be a good person who made a mistake, a hero gone wrong, a well-meaning person whose attempt to fix a problem goes dramatically wrong. They can, in fact, not be bad at all.

In the traditional mystery format (and there are many, many other types of what I prefer to call crime novels) the villain must appear early in the story, almost from the beginning; they must play a prominent part throughout. And it must not be known that they are the villain until almost the very end.

Sounds almost impossible to do, right? Put like that it’s a wonder anyone writes mysteries at all. But it’s not as hard as it sounds and it’s done, very successfully, all the time.

The novel has a cast of characters, presumably, and the villain can hide among them. The friend, the spouse, the colleague, sometimes even one of the cops or detectives. The villain must have a motive for the crime (at least in their own mind) and thus they must have a secret. It’s the uncovering of that secret that lies at the heart of most traditionally-constructed mystery novels.

The villain must fit the style of novel. In a small town police procedural series, such as my Constable Molly Smith books set in the Interior of British Columbia, the villain is never going to be an international terrorist seeking to end civilization as we know it. They have to be the sort of person who fits into the town and the type of crime that is found there. Usually personal, sometimes the result of secrets that go back for years if not generations.

The villain must be on the scale of the protagonist. Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty are two sides of the same coin. Sherlock uses his intellect to do good – Moriarty to do bad. Superman is perfectly good, therefore Lex Luther must be perfectly bad. A small town cop goes up against small scale, personal-level criminals, not international terrorists. James Bond goes up against international criminals and terrorists, not small-town petty criminals.

Writing the villain can be difficult, complex, and a lot of fun.

Vicki will be giving the workshop at this year’s Wolfe Island Scene of the Crime Festival on August 13^th. The subject is “The Criminal Mind: Writing the Villain.” For more information or to register, please visit www.sceneofthecrime.ca.

Also check CWC's Author Events for Vicki's cross-country road trip for Among the Departed

www.vickidelany.com

May is for Mayhem

2011-04-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

In Canada, April can bring us sun, rain, snow, hail - even a hurricane. May brings us National Crime Writing Month.

From Victoria to Halifax, events are being planned to celebrate this month of mayhem. If you can't make it to one of these events - or even if you can - National Crime Writing Month is only a click away, online, right here.

Last year we visited the great detectives of Canadian mystery authors. This year we're turning our magnifying glass on the criminals, anti-heroes and those supporting characters we love to hate.

Stay tuned and watch your back....

Howard Shrier - Winning Awards

2011-04-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

What awards did (and didn’t do) for my career

The 2009 Arthur Ellis Awards didn’t get off to the best start. The first thing I saw in the foyer outside the banquet room was an easel on which the names of all nominees were posted. Mine had been misspelled. Either that or some guy named Howard Schrier had also been nominated.

Remaining calm, I took out a pen, crossed out the offending C, then began doing what anyone in my position would do: get nervous.

Now competing in the hundred-yard stomach jump: Howard Schrier!

Amazingly, by evening’s end, I was holding my first Arthur Ellis Award and grinning like a lobotomized idiot.

The feeling was amazing. I had devoted four years of my life to my debut thriller, Buffalo Jump, had quit a secure, well paying job to finish it. To have it not only published by Random House Canada, but named best first novel by the Crime Writers of Canada had me soaring.

The same was true the following year when High Chicago won the Arthur for Best Novel. Again, just being nominated had been a thrill. Winning—on my son’s birthday, and with my agent and publishers in attendance—put me back up in the ether, there to remain for some time.

So what has capturing these awards done for my writing career?

Some things but not others.

There is no doubt it raised my profile among Canadian crime writers and fans. I began to receive more invitations to read, sign books, take part in panels. Calls came in from Sisters in Crime, Bloody Words, Durham’s Dark Lit Festival, Word on the Street, Scene of the Crime and other organizations and event planners. I was invited to contribute to blogs such as this one. My name appeared in dozens of Canadian newspapers from coast to coast as wire services picked up the Crime Writers’ news release on the winners. E-mails poured in from friends and fans. There were even cash awards from sponsors Book City and Sleuth of Baker Street respectively.

What winning did not seem to do was have a major impact on my book sales.

Oh, there was a flurry at first. When High Chicago won, the rankings of both my books on amazon.ca soared to the top and stayed quite high—for a week or two—before returning to earth, along with my spirits.

Okay, that was just amazon. What about bricks and mortar booksellers? Did readers stream in to scoop up the Arthur winner? The short answer from my publisher was: No. In their opinion, a positive review from a respected critic like Margaret Cannon of the Globe and Mail was more likely to generate sales than any award.

One reason the awards didn’t jack up my sales may have been that both books had already been out for nearly a year when the winners were announced; maybe most people who wanted to buy them already had.

There’s also the question of how well known the Arthur awards are, and how much weight they carry with readers. The organizers work unbelievably hard to put together the awards and publicize the results, and did so very successfully this year, but the name simply does not resonate as deeply as, say, the Gillers.

And as we all know, publishers have fewer resources these days to throw at author promotion. In better times, they might have done more to capitalize on awards like the Arthurs, leverage them into interviews and appearances. Today it’s mainly up to the author to promote their work and achievements. Which I did. I emailed everyone I know about the awards, posted the results on my web site, blogged here and there.

But that initial light flurry aside, sales didn’t jump enough to make a noticeable difference. Which is not to say it won’t happen in the future to deserving winners.

The bottom line for me is I could not be prouder of these awards. Whatever else I accomplish in my career, nothing will equal the thrill of winning them, especially the first, because you’re only eligible for that once. The wonderful wooden statuettes occupy a prominent place on my mantle and always will. To me they embody the respect of my fellow Canadian crime writers and that is incredibly important to me.

Plus my name is spelled right on both.

Howard is a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for excellence in Canadian crime writing. His debut thriller, Buffalo Jump, which introduces Toronto investigator Jonah Geller, won the Arthur for Best First Novel of 2008. The sequel, High Chicago, was named Best Novel of 2009.

http://howardshrier.com/

http://www.howardshrier.com/when/newsentry/my_ncwm_blog_surprise_update/

The finalists for the 2011 Arthur Ellis Awards will be announced on April 28, 2011 at the Arthur Ellis Shortlist Events in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Picton, Ottawa and Montreal.

Tickets for the 2011 Arthur Ellis Awards Banquet, June 2, 2011are on sale now.

Susan Calder Investigates Insurance

2011-03-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Insurance … dull? Or a cesspool of murder?

Next month, TouchWood Editions will release my first novel Deadly Fall, an amateur sleuth mystery. My protagonist, Paula Savard, investigates the murder of her childhood friend.

As I was conceiving Paula’s character, among her many attributes, I gave her the job of insurance adjuster because I’m familiar with the field. The longest job I held - ten years – was insurance claims examiner, which involved reviewing reports of adjusters out in the field investigating whiplash and liability claims.

Paula’s job became part of her motivation to solve the murder. Here was a chance to apply her training and skills to something she finds more meaningful and exciting than sore necks. Paula, like me, viewed insurance as boring and this was part of her problem at the story start. She’s gone as far as she wants to go in her career and needs more.

While writing the story, I stayed as far away as possible from Paula’s insurance work. I thought this would be dull, compared to the mystery, romance and other personal aspects. I also worried my insurance information was out of date since I hadn’t worked in the field for over twenty years. My former insurance colleagues might have joked, “Don’t worry. There’s nothing new in insurance.” And to be honest, a lunch with two friends in insurance reassured me not a lot had changed.

By the end of Deadly Fall, Paula and I realized insurance offers plenty of scope for crime. Burglaries, fires, hit-and-run accidents might be cover-ups for murder. My editor at TouchWood urged me to include more of Paula-on-the-job, to give readers a better sense of her character and set up future books in the series. So, I wrote scenes of Paula dealing with two suspicious claims and threaded them through the book.

Meanwhile, I wrote a sequel titled Secret Spring. Once again, I set Paula off on an amateur quest, although had her working with a detective she developed a relationship with in Deadly Fall. Secret Spring incorporated more of Paula’s job. I hope my editor will be satisfied. She’s reading the manuscript now.

Last fall, I started Book Three and decided it was time for an insurance-related murder. A man dies in a house fire. Paula investigates the case from the fire insurance angle. On the job, Paula continues investigating two suspicious claims she began working on in Secret Spring. This book will require more than my current insurance knowledge. For research, I’m looking for a contact in the adjusting business.

Mysteries are often classified as professional or amateur sleuth. An insurance adjuster falls in the middle. Unlike a police detective, Paula’s job isn’t solving murders, but she can easily stumble upon them in the course of her work. As the series continues, she will stumble more.

Now that I’ve written stories from both Paula’s amateur and professional perspective, I see the difficulties with each genre. For the amateur sleuth, there’s the problem of motivation – why is she doing all these things and exposing herself to danger? For the professional, the why is simple: it’s her job. But, in Book Three I quickly realized Paula’s investigation would become mechanical for the reader if I didn’t make it personal for her. My conclusion from all this is, amateur or professional, writing a mystery is a challenge.

In his celebrated book On Writing, author Stephen King says that people love to read about someone else’s work. What may be routine to you, fascinates others. Every job is bound to contain possibilities for murder and crime. All it takes is a little what if? In Deadly Fall, Paula and I discovered this about insurance.

Susan Calder grew up in Montreal and currently lives in Calgary. Her first novel Deadly Fall was published by TouchWood Editions in March 2011. Susan’s short stories have won contests and been published in various magazines. She teaches courses and workshops at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society. www.susancalder.com

Next... Award winning Howard Shrier on winning awards

Brenda Chapman: Orca's Rapid Reads

2011-03-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Why Rapid Reads?

During the first half of my working career, I was a special education teacher at a private school run by two psychologists. My specialty was teaching reading to kids with moderate to severe learning problems. On occasion, I was assigned an adult who had difficulty reading at even the most basic level. Comprehension was rarely the issue; rather, it was the ability to make sense of letters on the page.

One startling example of this learning discrepancy was embodied in an engineer I worked with over a few year period. He travelled the world designing bridges and had penned a highly technical textbook on the subject that he could not read. He had accomplished this by dictating the text to an assistant, who then typed his words into a manuscript. Equally as impressive, he had earned a doctorate in engineering by auditory memory.

There are days that I miss working with these students. The challenge and the satisfaction are difficult to replicate. I was therefore delighted to be approached by Orca Publishing last year to submit a manuscript for their highly successful Rapid Reads series.

The idea behind these novels is to produce low vocabulary/ high comprehension stories that will be suitable for adults with literacy problems as well as adults looking for a light read – for example, someone on a business trip who wants to complete a novel during a flight. The novels are to have a straight forward plotline with little flashback and no subplots. They must be interesting, fast paced, and in my case, a mystery. The demand for such material is large and likely on the rise since literacy rates are generally projected to decline in the next decade.

As luck would have it, I had a mystery short story kicking around that had won a contest a few years back. It had never been published or even read aloud in its entirety at any events. I wanted to share it but bided my time as I pondered where to best place it.

While writing this short story, I had grown incredibly fond of the main character, a desk cop named Gwen Lake – a middle-aged woman in a rut with a career that is going nowhere, a sharp intelligence she does not use, and a depressing personal life. She is essentially an 'every man' stuck in the nine to five bureaucratic quagmire who longs for something more but worries that time is running out. She’s like so many middle-aged people who’ve let go of all their dreams and settled.

The eventual stand that my character takes against the status quo and her safe but unfulfilled life makes her actions in a sense heroic. In many ways, Gwen Lake in The Second Wife is not unlike those adult students I taught years ago who decided to tackle a lifetime of learning failure to be able to read their children a simple bedtime story. This unexpected courage and willingness to step outside one's comfort zone is inspiring, whether in an adult who goes back to school to learn to read or in a fictional character who decides to risk their own safety to solve a murder.

Brenda Chapman is author of the Jennifer Bannon mystery series for young adults and In Winter's Grip, an adult murder mystery. She has two upcoming releases in 2011: The Second Wife (Orca Rapid Reads) in April, and YA novel Second Chances (Dundurn) in the fall. Brenda is a former teacher and currently works as a senior communications advisor in Ottawa.

Stephen Gaspar: Holmes Sweet Holmes

2011-02-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

The Quintessential Detective

We who are enamored with detective stories probably began our love affair with one particular detective; Miss Marple, Philip Marlowe, Hercule Poirot, maybe even Jim Rockford. As a teenager I was charmed by the quintessential detective, Sherlock Holmes.

There is something romantic about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective whose fine mind is offset by his rather antisocial and Bohemian lifestyle. It is appealing to us who imagine ourselves as antisocial and Bohemian, though our minds may not be as fine-tuned as the detective’s.

I am not surprised at the recent resurgence of interest in Holmes with the success of the Robert Downey Jr. movies and the new BBC television series. Both portray a different Holmes, a revamped Holmes, a Holmes for the 21st century.

The concept is nothing new. Universal made a dozen movies in the 1940s with Basil Rathbone as a contemporary Sherlock Holmes, sometimes fighting Nazis spies and saboteurs.

I am a traditionalist. I am a big fan of Doyle’s original canon and a big fan of the Granada television series starring Jeremy Brett. When I wrote my first Sherlock Holmes book, The Canadian Adventures of Sherlock Holmes I tried to write traditionally with Sir Arthur and Jeremy Brett in mind.

Before I even began to write, I re-read all the original Holmes stories. More than that I had to study my Canadian history, because not only did I want my main character to be authentic, I needed true Canadian history to play a part in the story.

I decided to write short stories -- much like Doyle’s most popular adventures --- following Holmes as he traveled across Canada solving mysteries along the way, from the death-by-canon murder in Halifax to the strange death of the Overlander in Victoria.

In choosing a year in which the Canadian adventures would take place, I was restricted by the Sherlock Holmes’s chronology of adventures. My story could not take place at the same time as an original story. Also, I wanted Holmes to meet and do a service for Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier. I chose the year 1897.

As a sequel to The Canadian Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I am currently posting my latest Holmes adventure, Cold Hearted Murder on my blog in installments, one chapter at a time. This format is reminiscent of how the original stories came out monthly in The Strand Magazine.

In Cold Hearted Murder Holmes is brought out of his lethargy by a series of grotesque and hideous murders in London. There is, of course, a Canadian connection to these murders that is revealed in a similar manner as in the very first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet.

Cold Hearted Murder can be found at:
http://stephengaspar.blogspot.com/


Stephen Gaspar has lived all his life in Windsor, Ontario. He and his wife Susan have twin sons. As an author Stephen Gaspar has combined his interest in history with his love of mystery/detective stories. His most recent book, To Know Evil is a historical murder mystery set in the middle-ages.

To view the YouTube promo for Cold Hearted Murder, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydPhI44KGlI

Please visit my website:
http://stephengaspar.webstarts.com/index.html

Mary Jane Maffini Massacres Valentines

2011-02-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

You say Massacre, I say Mysterious …

Honestly, it’s the worst month of the year to be a mystery author. February is famous for love, chocolates, romantic music, sexy drinks by candlelight, and all that good stuff.

But it just makes me feel guilty about my three single sleuths. I never really give them a break. Oh, sure, I let them get into the odd romantic entanglement (a clinch here, a smooch there, even the odd sleepover) but I don’t make it easy for them.

You see, here’s the thing: mysteries are all about tension, about what’s out of reach and the tantalizing unknown. Cozy domesticity can pour cold water on all that sizzling suspense.

First of all, in terms of a relationship developing, there’s the whole ‘Will they? Won’t they?’ thing. A writer can build some nice sub-plots and twists with that, all the while stalling. As a storyteller, you need to. It’s a bit like the dance of the seven veils: keep the readers guessing. You never want them to get bored. But who pays the price? All those single protagonists, so often alone in their beds. That’s who.

Of course, if the truth be told (and you can’t count on it from me) my three sleuths, are not good marriage material. They’re just not. Period. Fiona Silk is divorced. Not her fault. She’s fallen for the wrong man and more than once too. Plus she’s unlucky.

Camilla MacPhee is a widow. Her husband was killed by a drunk driver at the age of thirty. It has left her, ten years later, with a certain crabbiness and an obsessive quest for justice. Try not to get in her way. She does have a relationship with Ray Deveau, a very pleasant sergeant in the Cape Breton Regional Police Force. Of course, he has been living 1642 kilometres from Ottawa and Camilla. Now, apparently he’s moving to Ottawa. We’ll see how that goes. Camilla’s not the easiest person in the world to live with.

Then there’s Charlotte Adams, the youngest of my sleuths. There might be romantic hope for her, although she was betrayed by her cheating hound of an ex-fiancé. What can I say? Now she’s thirty-one. One of these days she’ll wake up and realize that she’s in love with Jack Reilly, her best friend and landlord. It might even happen in the next book, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder (arriving April 5^th!). Just don’t bet the farm on it.

Plus, have I mentioned that it can be very dangerous to get too close to a sleuth? The would-be love interest is so often injured and occasionally one will even get killed, if it suits the author’s evil purposes. It won’t be the protagonist’s doing, but what solace is that to the potential mate as he or she lies bleeding on the Persian rug/sandy beach/fresh fallen snow?

Then there are communications snags: the modern protags cell phones are always pitching into rivers, running out of juice, being stolen, squashed by vehicles or destroyed by villains. They’re not so good at returning calls. That leads to bruised feelings and canceled dates. It’s hard to build a relationship that way, but, face it, in this blood-soaked world, plot considerations trump all else.

Finally, partners, lovers, dates and spouses not only make excellent victims, they can turn into wonderful suspects. And in mysteries, good things might happen, but bad things must happen. So hang on to your hats, Camilla, Fiona and Charlotte. I can’t be too easy on you.

Remember, the shade associated with February and Valentine’s Day (that gorgeous true red of Valentines and long-stemmed roses) is the colour of arterial blood, isn’t it? In our stories, love is an appealing option, but death is essential.

Happy Valentine’s Season! May it be filled with mystery and chocolate for you readers. Right. And remind me to send roses to my three girls. It’s the least I can do for ruining their lives.

Mary Jane Maffini is a lapsed librarian, former co-owner of Ottawa’s Prime Crime Mystery Bookstore, member of the Ladies Killing Circle, and author of thirteen books in three series (plus some on the way).

www.maryjanemaffini.ca

Alison Bruce Rings in the Year of the Rabbit

2011-01-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

The Year of the Gold Rabbit

“The last time we spoke, we were arguing. Right there,” I said waving in the direction of the kitchen counter the constable was leaning against. “About that stupid ornament and Chinese New Year of all things.” I shook my head in disbelief.

While the swarthy, stone-faced police officer took notes, I was fussing about making tea and setting out cookies, as if this was social occasion, not a murder investigation.

“You were arguing about Chinese New Year?”

“My husband thinks - thought - that I’m silly to celebrate Chinese New Year when I’m not Chinese. I’ve never understood why that mattered. I celebrate Christmas with his family and I’m not Christian. Anyway, I like Chinese New Year better than the western one.”

Much better, I thought. Chinese New Year was celebrated over two weeks with days for family, friends, ancestors, solitude ... noodles. The western New Year’s Eve was marked with extravagant parties, too much alcohol, too much noise and too many of my husband’s drunk friends groping ass and pressing sloppy kisses.

“And the ornament?” the constable prompted. “A bronze bunny?”

“It’s the year of the Gold Rabbit - well any metal actually. See,” I pointed to the plate rail around the breakfast nook. It had been enlarged to accommodate larger items, though the first item in the line was a porcelain plate ornately painted with dancing rats. Beside it was a earthenware figure of an ox; next a cast-iron tiger was crouched.

“Ben bought me the plate the first year we were married.”

“Did he buy the other ornaments?”

“Just the first. My sister gave me the ox - I was born in the Year of the Ox. I found the tiger at a St Jacob’s market. See, there are two earth years, then two metal years, next year and the year after will be water. I was thinking of glass figures to represent water... shit, I’m babbling aren’t I?”

The kettle whistled blew, giving me something to focus on. I wasn’t a babbler by nature. Ox people aren’t. They are strong, steadfast and indomitable. If I kept telling myself that, maybe I’d believe it.

I warmed the pot before adding loose tea and just-off-the-boil water. I made enough for the constable and myself. No point in brewing for the crew in the study. They were too busy taking prints, and photographing blood spatter while they waited for the medical examiner to arrive.

With everything laid out at the table, I finally sat down for the first time since I came home.

Since I came home... seems like a life time ago, but it was less than two hours. The smell was the first thing that alerted me. It drew me to Ben’s home office where I found him, head caved in, slumped over the documents he was working on at his desk.

He was an investment manager. As I has already explained to the constable, and would probably explain over and over again, Ben often worked at home. The partnership had offices but he mostly met his clients at their homes or places of business or here. I didn’t mention that our marriage might have been better if he didn’t bring his work home. They’d figure it out fast enough when they examined the papers Ben had bled so profusely over.

“Tell me about the argument and what happened next.”

I gave myself a moment to collect myself by pouring tea. Once I had taken care of my duties as hostess and my hands were wrapped around a hot mug, I started recounting everything I remembered.

The argument had started when Ben saw the bill for the bronze rabbit. I was making pork dumplings when he stomped in, waving the VISA bill. He took the rabbit down from its place on the shelf and brandished it while he berated me for my adherence to another culture’s holiday.

“He started by chastising me for wasting money but, as I pointed out, it was my money, not his - therefore none of his business. So the old “why do you observe Chinese New Year” argument got pulled out again. Then he smashed the rabbit into the dumplings I had just made. I was so mad, I grabbed my coat and purse and slammed out the back door.”

The constable looked around the kitchen for evidence of the dumplings.

“I cleaned up when I got home. They’re in the green garbage if you want to check.”

His nose wrinkled up in distaste. No doubt someone would check. Not him. Not now.

“Where did you go after you left the house?” he asked, getting back on point.

“I called a friend and we went out for sushi downtown. I’m not sure when we got there, but we left at three – she had to get home for her kids. I did about three pots of tea worth of venting.”

I provided the name and contact information of my friend, the restaurant and oriental market I went next to pick up new dumpling wrappers.

“When I got home, I came through the backdoor. I wasn’t surprised that the kitchen was still a mess. Ben wouldn’t lift a finger in the kitchen. I cleaned up then went to see if he was in his office and if there was anyone with him. Some of his clients are scary.”

“Scary how?”

“This is awkward,” I said hesitantly. “I suspect that a large part of my husband’s client list are... uh... connected. I’m not sure that he does anything illegal ...” I trailed off. Very awkward.

Whether Ben's actions were legal or not, I was damned sure they were immoral. Let’s be frank though, I wasn’t going to mess with the mob.

A plainclothes detective walked in. With a nod to the constable, he left and she sat at the table. She looked at the untouched mug of tea, stirred in a spoonful of sugar and took a sip before speaking.

“Were you aware that your husband’s clients included identified members of organized crime?”

I didn’t bother evading.

“I suspected as much. To be honest, I was too frightened to ask.”

“How much do you know about your husband’s business and clients.”

“Not much about the business beyond the stuff you pick up at parties - shop talk. I’d see many of his business associates at our annual New Year’s Eve party and the annual barbeque that Jim and Elaine threw. They’re Ben’s partners.”

I was asked for full names and contact information again.

“Have you ever met a Mr Zaid Nadir?”

I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

I did have a very unpleasant but polite man come looking for Ben when I was alone in the house. I don’t think it was Nadir, but maybe one of his followers. He scared the hell out of me.

“I saw the name on the papers Ben was working on,” I admitted. “When I saw Ben – I know it’s silly all things considered – I had to check. I didn’t touch anything, but I had to know if he was breathing. There was so much blood, but I could see that the last thing he was working on was a life insurance policy. The name Nadir stood out because there was no blood there - like Ben had been covering up the name when he was struck, then his hand slipped. It was so “CSI” it stuck in my head.”

The detective seemed to accept this, but I took that to be more indicative of a good poker face than anything else. As the wife of the deceased, I was her prime suspect. Eventually I would be eliminated as my alibi checked out and the physical evidence was examined. I hadn’t handled the rabbit since I polished it and placed it on the shelf using my chamois so I wouldn’t leave marks on the smooth surface.

If I happened to tell one of Ben’s associates that I suspected my husband was dealing with terrorists – not that the police ever confirmed that Nadir was a terrorist, even after he turned up dead – but if I did, and they took exception to this, that’s not my fault. I think it’s comforting to know that just because a person is a criminal, doesn’t mean he can’t also be patriotic.

As for the brass bunny, it’s in an evidence box somewhere. A smaller, solid gold rabbit has taken it’s place the shelf.

Happy New Year!

Alison Bruce is a writer, editor and designer. She produces Crime Writers of Canada's publications, including this blog, and is on the Board of Action Read Literacy Centre.

Next... Mary Jane Maffini slaughters Valentine's Day

Kay Stewart: New Year; New Book

2011-01-16T06:55:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve...

RCMP Constable Danutia Dranchuk pinned another crime scene photo to the board. This one showed Esther Mike’s distorted face, her eyes and neck bulging from the black ribbon used to strangle her. Ordinarily, the pressure would have forced the tongue from her mouth. Not in this case. Rammed down her throat was her severed right hand.

Danutia had just been put in charge of stalled investigations into the deaths of Esther Mike and a second Aboriginal woman, Marie Wilson. A 33-year-old status Indian from the New Songhees Reserve in Esquimalt, Esther had been charged with various offences by both the Victoria police and West Shore RCMP. Her mug shots showed a woman losing her good looks as addiction and a hard life took their toll. In the last one, taken the previous October, a half-moon scar disfigured her left cheek. By that time, according to family members, she’d lost her three children to Social Services and was drifting from man to man. During the Christmas holidays she had been sleeping on a friend’s couch, on the nights she came home. The last time she’d been seen, as far as anyone had been willing to say, was the Friday before New Year’s. When her body was found, she was wearing a flounced red skirt with black fishnet stockings and a garter belt. The investigating officer assumed she’d been hooking.

A few days later, Danutia was waiting for Body Transport at Witty’s Lagoon when the coroner, an avid birder, mentioned a rare spectacle he’d seen: red-necked phalaropes spinning in circles to stir up food from the lagoon’s marshy bottom. “Couldn’t tell if they were males or females,” he said. “They were probably juveniles, this late, and the plumage is the same in both sexes. It’s a different story with the adults. One’s larger, with brighter plumage, and I bet you think it’s the male, but it’s not. The phalaropes are one of the few bird species where the females put on the sexual display.”

McCasland’s chance remark about “sexual display” sent Danutia scurrying back to her files on the two Aboriginal women. Soon she found what she was looking for. On the Easter Saturday Marie Wilson disappeared, she had gone dancing at the Castaway Club. The theme for that night was Hawaiian Luau. Marie had been strangled with the lei of artificial flowers she’d worn as part of her costume. On a hunch, Danutia called the club and asked what the theme had been for New Year’s Eve.

The manager put her on hold while he checked his calendar. “Moulin Rouge,” he said. “You know, can-can dancers.”

Can-can dancers. Flounced skirts, fishnet stockings, choker ribbons around their necks. “I’ll be right out,” Danutia said.

--Adapted from Sitting Lady Sutra, forthcoming from TouchWood Editions, March 2011

A native of Texas, Kay completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Oregon. She taught for many years at the University of Alberta before moving to Vancouver Island in 2000. When she isn’t at the computer, Kay is often working in the garden at the rural property near Nanaimo that she shares with her husband and assorted wildlife.

Joan Boswell Rings in the New Year

2011-01-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year?

Should the arrival of a new year be cause for celebration, an unquestioningly joyful welcome to 2011’s opportunities? The crowds on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto or in any other public space where revellers gather to sing and dance the new year in would lead you to believe this.

But many don’t share this sentiment. Consideration of what 2011 may bring makes them apprehensive, even deeply uneasy?

It isn’t that they don’t hope and even expect that the year will be a good one. Rather this uneasiness seems to arise from a deeply ingrained fear of tempting the gods to wield their power and punish any mortal who dares to expect good to happen to her. I think it’s why in some cultures people do not like anyone making favourable remarks about a child, superstitious that this will bring bad luck.

Aging may intensify the reaction. The knowledge that, statistically, you or your contemporaries may not make it through the year without significant losses may colour your judgment. And a new year brings you closer to the front of the line, to the sign up sheet for eternity.

However I don’t believe aging has anything to do with disliking new years. For most who feel this way the dread of the new year began long ago in their teens or twenties.

How to avoid such negativity? A good question.

One solution is to totally ignore the new year, to refuse to watch the ball drop in Times Square, to deliberately avoid making resolutions for personal betterment, to carry on as if the turning of a calendar page is of no significance whatsoever.

I suspect those who claim that the new year begins in September belong to this gang and make their commitments for change in the fall when they can ignore the implications of a new year.

But for those who didn’t take Labour Day as a marker, a second solution is to make commitments to improve not because it’s the new year but because it just happens to be time. For writers this could mean vowing to sit at your desk every weekday morning by nine, to write a prescribed number of pages each day, to diligently apply yourself to discovering all that the digital world offers, to be brave and venture into the world of blogs and twittering not merely as a silent skulker but as a participant.

Whatever camp you fall into I wish you a Happy New Year.

Author of the Hollis Grant mystery series (Cut Off His Tale, Cut to the Quick and Cut to the Chase), Joan Boswell's first creative career was as an artist. After ten solo shows and four posters produced by Posters International, she switched her focus to writing. Once she became a member of Ottawa’s notorious Ladies’ Killing Circle there was no turning back. She has had stories in each of their six books: The Ladies’ Killing Circle, Cottage Country Killers, Menopause Is Murder, Fit to Die, Bone Dance, Boomers Go Bad, and Going Out With a Bang.
http://joanboswell.ca

Next... a murderous New Year from Kay Stewart's new book.

Cheryl Kaye Tardif - Joy and Grief for the Holidays

2010-12-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

Stairway to Heaven: Remembering Those We've Lost at Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be one of the most joyous times of the year, but for anyone who has lost a loved one, the Christmas season can be anything but joyous, and sometimes we have to look for new ways to deal with the pain of loss and to celebrate their life. I know this pain very intimately; I've lost a child and a brother, not to mention grandparents and a friend.

After a 16 hour labour, filled with intense back pain, I delivered my first baby - a son. My pregnancy had been as perfect as "perfect" could be, with only bouts of heartburn as a side effect. I had no "morning sickness"; I don't believe in it. I didn't drink or smoke. I was probably at my healthiest, though definitely at my heaviest, just before my son's birth.

Immediately after birth, there were complications. I knew my baby was dying. I could see it on the faces of my doctor and the nurses. I could tell by the way one nurse lifted my baby's tiny discoloured leg and let it drop. No response. I could tell by the aching silence that filled the room. I could tell by the way I couldn't breathe.

My son died 4 hours later, en route to a children's hospital. I remained behind, lost in a fog of despair. "A fluke," the doctor told me later. "A brain stem haemorrhage." They'd had no warning. Neither had I. That was June 1989.

When Christmas arrived that year, I felt a mix of happiness and sadness. I was pregnant again and scared to the bone. I mourned the loss of my firstborn, a son who wouldn't be receiving a toy truck from Santa that year. I was supposed to have celebrated Christmas with my husband and child that year. I felt ripped off, and scared that the same thing would happen to my second baby.

So I bought a decorative angel for the tree, in remembrance of my son. I bought another angel ornament for a table display. This was the beginning of what would become my angel collection, which now resides on a special wall we had built in our new home, a wall I call my Stairway to Heaven.

My brother Jason was killed 4 weeks after Christmas in 2006. His photograph resides on my Stairway to Heaven wall. He was only 28; his murder has never been solved. Other family members who have passed on are also displayed and remembered on the wall―my husband's grandfather and uncle, my two grandmothers and one grandfather, and one of my best childhood friend's who committed suicide.

Though their losses are still strong, I choose to celebrate their lives. Their pictures remind me of who they were. I rejoice that all but one lived long enough to love and be loved. I smile when I think of my son, of what his life could have been. The anger and debilitating pain is long gone; time does heal, if given the chance. I miss not knowing him. I'll never forget him―my firstborn, my only son.

When my daughter was born, one year after my son, I discovered my daughter had a tiny splotch in the middle of her brow. My doctor told me it was called an "Angel's Kiss". Many years later, I took a closer look at the only photo of my son and discovered that he had the same splotch. No wonder I collect angels.

To those of you who have lost a loved one and are finding this Christmas particularly hard, please know that time will heal your pain. There is always light at the end of even the darkest tunnel. You'll never forget your loved one. Maybe you'll build a Stairway to Heaven wall. Maybe you'll collect angels. Maybe you'll find another way to honour and celebrate the LIFE of your loved one. Because that's what matters―their LIFE.

This Christmas, I wish you love, forgiveness, hope, faith, and above all, peace.

Bestselling author Cheryl Kaye Tardif is best known for her emotional, inspirational novel WHALE SONG, a novel that will change how you view life...and death. WHALE SONG makes a wonderful Christmas gift and is available in ebook and paperback via Amazon and other retailers.

You can learn more about Cheryl and her novels by visiting http://www.cherylktardif.com and http://www.cherylktardif.blogspot.com.

Barbara Fradkin - A Green Hanukkah

2010-12-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

Death Takes No Holiday

It is two weeks before Christmas in the city of Ottawa, which has been pummelled by a blizzard and mesmerized by the plight of a missing young woman. A frozen body has just been discovered buried in a snowbank in the wealthy enclave of Rockcliffe, home to diplomats, deputy ministers…and desperate secrets. Colourful Christmas lights, plastic Santas and piped-in carols wash the landscape as police fan out en masse in search of the missing woman. And a killer.

It is also the first night of Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish winter holiday which has become a tradition in Inspector Green’s family. In Chapter Twelve, I describe the scene…

Sid Green’s face sagged as he watched his grandson light the Hanukah menorah. It was the first year the five year-old had been trusted with the honour, and it should have been a celebration. Yet even Tony looked as if he’d lost his best friend.
….Sharon had dressed the table in white and sparkling silver in honour of both Friday night Shabbat and the first night of Hanukkah. A platter of golden latkes filled the air with the scent of onions and oil, but the beauty only sharpened the sense of loss. Hannah’s place was set, as a symbol of her inclusion, but the empty chair spoke volumes.

The sadness is not just because Green’s teenage daughter is missing from the celebration, having flown across the country to spend the holidays with her mother. It is also because Green is in the middle of a murder investigation and has to go to Montreal in the morning to follow up some leads from a thirty-year old cold case. When death strikes, there is no time to waste. The killer must be tracked down before witnesses and evidence disappear and before he can potentially strike again. Bereaved loved ones must be reassured that the police will give them justice, and fellow officers need a strong, experienced hand at the helm to provide insight and direction.

At the best of times, Green struggles to balance his home responsibilities with the urgent demands of his work. It’s a struggle he sometimes fails miserably, but in recent years, with the bond between his estranged daughter and himself slowly mending and his son growing into a perceptive and articulate little boy, he has been trying to reset the balance.

In Canada’s predominantly Christian society, celebrating the traditions of minority groups is always a challenge. The holidays must be squeezed into off-work hours, and the preparations done while juggling the ongoing demands of the larger world in which they live. The glares or uncomfortable silences from co-workers must be endured if one leaves early or books a sick day. Nowhere is this juggling act more evident than in the twenty-four-hour-a-day, almost completely non-Jewish environment in which Green works. In the past, Green has never been much of a Jew; his Holocaust-survivor parents had been paranoid about any outward display, and his own Jewish expression had been limited to bagels and smoked meat. But through his wife and his growing family, he is slowly reconnecting to the heritage he had lost.

So here he is, at the start of what should be a joyful holiday full of candles and songs and games. But instead, he is deep in the middle of a mysterious death and facing days away from home. All around him, the bright lights of Christmas are a vivid reminder that everyone else is celebrating a very different holiday. That if he is not at home to share Hanukkah with his family, they will have precious little sense of it at all.

This is just one of the nagging pressures Green faces in Beautiful Lie the Dead, as he battles potential sabotage, the weather and a ticking clock to solve an old puzzle and track down a new killer.

Barbara Fradkin is best known for her award-winning detective series, featuring the exasperating, quixotic Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green whose passion for justice and love of the hunt often interferes with family, friends, and police protocol.

An active member of Canada's writing community, Barbara served as president of Crime Writers of Canada (2004−2005).

www.barbarafradkin.com

Next... Cheryl Kaye Tardif, loss and getting through the holidays.

Leslie Bendaly - Making the Leap to Fiction

2010-12-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

From Fact to Fiction

It has definitely been a leap. And, thankfully, more exhilarating than frightening. I have been writing for years but my previous books have been business oriented, on leadership and organizational change. And so with Deadly Mementos I leapt from a structured writing process that, for the most part, moved ahead logically as originally intended, to a writing experience in which the characters frequently took off in directions I had never envisioned.

The biggest challenge I faced in the transition was that the objectivity that came so easily in writing non fiction was lost when I became involved in the characters. There were instances when I was not able to stand back and effectively assess my writing of the characters any more than they could stand back and assess their flawed lives. Thanks to one of my editors, rather than derailing the book, each instance became a lesson learned.

The first came with something that I had originally written many moons ago for a workshop with Peter Robinson and which eventually became the seed that grew into Deadly Mementos. In the piece my psychotic villain is having a flash back that gives the reader insight into his creepy nature and reason to fear for the safety of Sara Porter, my protagonist. My editor's feedback was that although I had created a character "capable of making one's skin crawl", it was much too long. Pages too long, I am embarrassed to say. My long windedness had taken the reader too far away from the plot. I had disrupted the plot line as one who likes the sound of his own voice disrupts a conversation.

Point of view was something I really thought I had a handle on. I was meticulous about it, or so I thought, as I find it annoying when the author changes POV too frequently and I am not sure whose head we are in at the moment. But I slipped up on one or two occasions when I was writing in Toronto Detective Keith Carson's POV and became caught up in how Sara Porter, business woman and mother, suddenly accused of murder, would be feeling. My feedback here was that my changing POV without any indication, such as spacing or new chapter, was jarring for the reader. Fairly major rewrites put the right scenes back into the right heads at the right time and allowed things to once again flow smoothly.

And then, the all important ending when the reader finds out who did it and why. I thought I had written it so as that the reader would get inside the murderer. They would understand what would motivate someone to do such a thing and how it could happen. But what I had done was write a soliloquy that went on, and on, and on. Not badly written I was told, but even Lawrence Olivier would have had trouble keeping the audience's attention should he read it aloud.

This was trickier than repairing the flash back as it wasn't so much a matter of cutting, as all of the information was important, but of how to break it up and enrich the scene in the process. I introduced a number of devices from the simplest, having the speaker pause more often to take a sip of tea or offer a nut to a squirrel, to having the listener, from whose point of view I was writing, visualize the murder scene that was being described. When I was finished I found it hard to fathom how I had been pleased with the original.

The over all lesson learned was never get too pleased with your self. It seemed that everything that required major change was something I had felt quite good about. Now that the next one, You Can't Take It Back, is underway, I do a double check whenever I'm about to pat myself on the back.

Leslie Bendaly was previously best known for her books on Leadership, Teamwork and Organizational Change. Deadly Mementos, the first in a series featuring Sara Porter and Detective Keith Carson, is her debut novel.

Leslie divides her time between Toronto and St Maarten where her husband is posted with his work.

Visit Leslie at www.lesliebendaly.com

Next... The holidays kick off with a series of seasonally themed blogs from CWC authors.

Alex Markman: Inspired by real terror

2010-11-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

The Age of Crime

Personal and international problems of modern times are so inter-related that sometimes it is not easy to separate them. On this premises I write crime novels evolving around contemporary moral, political, and philosophical conflicts, an individual confronts in everyday life one way or another. Messenger of Death is one of these. Inspired by biker gangs’ war in Quebec, it is a work of fiction, telling the workings of the underworld thriving on the ills of our affluent society.

Biker gangs have emerged as a new form of organized crime in the modern age. International in scale, well organized, disciplined, and adaptable to any changes in legislation and police tactics, they appear to be the most powerful structure in the history of underworld. As penetration into their close circle is mission impossible, writing a truthful story about their life is a prodigious task.

Messenger of Death is one of a very few gangsters novels inspired by actual events. It depicts terror and tragedy of the gangsters’ lives and the innocent people close to them amidst a tough and dangerous environment.

A significant part of the novel is dedicated to government politics and problems associated with adoption of laws facilitating the fight against organized crime and bikers’ gangs in particular. Due to self-imposed restrictions on democratic procedures, constitutional rights of individuals and associations, fighting the new form of organized crime was an overwhelming task.

I tried to make the story entertaining, yet it revolves around serious problems of our society. Those who like an easy read will follow the action layer of the plot, with its intricacies of criminal dealings and the political struggle surrounding organized crime. More cerebral readers will recognize many contemporary social problems, which have no easy solutions.

Coming soon: Contra-ODESSA, inspired by a true story. In 1960s KGB sent their agents to Argentina to find former SS members who kept their fortunes in Swiss banks, and extort from them under gunpoint and torture their secret account numbers. After encounters with CIA operatives and former ODESSA members, the KGB agents took the money and disappeared. They have never returned back to the Soviet Union, and have never been found by the KGB.

Alex Markman is the author of fiction books, main subject of which is adventure, romance and integrity of human mind and soul. His drive to discover new places has brought him to such locales as the vast, unspoiled wilderness of Russian Ural and Siberia to the refined urban areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco. His adventures, often dangerous, and familiarity with people from different cultures have given him abundant material for his highly entertaining stories.

More about the author: http://sites.google.com/site/alexmarkmanwriter.com/

Vicki Delany talks shop with cops

2010-11-07T05:46:00.000-08:00

Writing Canadian Cops

When I decided I wanted to write a police series of the style of the British ones I like to read and I wanted it set in Canada, I faced two problems.

I have no law enforcement experience whatsoever.

I want as much veracity as possible in books I write.

Everything I knew about policing I know from watching American TV and movies and from reading British novels by the likes of Peter Robinson, Ian Rankin, Susan Hill. I’ll bet the situation is the same for most of us. Once in a while a Canadian cop show comes along, but how much can you trust TV for reality anyway?

I realized that if I was going to be able to write the sort of books I wanted to write, I needed help.

And I got it.

I’ve been very lucky, and have been able to write, so far, four novels about a small town police department in the Interior of B.C. I’ve met a detective constable who cheerfully answers any and all of my procedural or legal questions with good humour. And if he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll check with his boss or even the department lawyer to find out. I’ve been on ride alongs and walk alongs, I’ve toured police stations, met many officers, talked to dog handlers and met their dogs, been to observe in-service training, been to the firearms training course (where they didn’t let me touch a weapon, you’ll be pleased to hear). I’ve been taken step-by-step though fight moves and lent books about police psychology.

I’ve had some really boring nights too. As I try to explain when the nice officer assigned to take me out apologizes because nothing at all happened, if I want to see a gun battle or a bank robbery in progress, I’ll watch TV. It’s the everyday details of the ordinary cop’s job that I’m interested in seeing first hand, that I want to give veracity to the books.

The protagonist of the Constable Molly Smith series is young, green, a bit naïve. When the series begins, in In the Shadow of the Glacier, she is still on probation. She walks the beat on a Saturday afternoon, attends fender-benders, throws drunks into the drunk tank, tells people to empty out their cans of beer, helps confused old ladies cross the street, answers domestic calls, and stands outside crime scenes not letting anyone in.

This is the detail of day-to-day policing I’m trying to get right for my books. That as well as the way the officers relate to each other, the jokes they tell, how they balance families and young children, how they train (or not). My books are about murder and kidnappings and tragedy, yes, but they are also about people and relationships.

There are considerable differences, I have learned, between Canadian and British or American policing. For example, British police normally do not carry firearms, American police are required to carry their guns at all times, even when off duty. Canadians, as seems to be our national characteristic, are somewhere in the middle. Canadian police carry their guns when they are on duty and are (in almost all cases) forbidden to carry them when not working. Thus at the climax of In the Shadow of the Glacier, Molly Smith is off duty when she has her final confrontation with the bad guy. And all she has to defend herself are her stiletto shoes, her cell phone, and her considerable wits. In one of the other books, she is working at the climax and so she is able to use her gun to end the situation.

Canadian police (so my police friends tell me) are likely to be better educated than American police. In one of the Decker books by Faye Kellerman, when Cindy Decker becomes a police officer she finds it hard to be accepted by her fellows because she has a university degree. Among my police contacts are a Masters Degree in Industrial Relations and an MBA. Canadian police are better trained (again, so the cops tell me) and well paid. There is no such thing in Canada as a part-time police officer and Canadian police very rarely have to take other jobs to make ends meet. A cop is a cop.

Here’s a picture of a handsome officer I met on my travels.

I’ve also learned things I’ve decided not to incorporate into my books. For example, it is the norm in most US police K9 units for the dog to live in the house with the officer; in Canada they follow the RCMP model in which the dog lives in a kennel outside the house. I decided in this situation I’d go for atmosphere and colour rather than veracity and so I let Norman, my RCMP dog, stretch out on the rug beside the fireplace.

Sometimes the story has to come first.

Vicki Delany writes everything from standalone novels of psychological suspense, such as Scare the Light Away and Burden of Memory, to a light-hearted historical series, Gold Digger and Gold Fever, set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. The Constable Molly Smith books, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior, include In the Shadow of the Glacier and Winter of Secrets. The fourth book in the Constable Molly Smith series, Negative Image, was published by Poisoned Pen Press on November 2, 2010. Kirkus Reviews said Negative Image “…combines the crisp plotting of the best small-town police procedurals with trenchant commentary on such universal problems as love and trust.”

Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com

Next: Leslie Bendaly has Deadly Mementos.